MORE than 5,000 newly graduated doctors in Venezuela received their degrees as specialists in integral general medicine at the weekend at a ceremony led by President Nicolas Maduro.

The group of 5,016 doctors will work in low-income areas throughout the country in order to ensure universal access to healthcare.

The large cohort was part of a training programme designed to facilitate access to higher education to lower-income groups.

“You will give love, health, knowledge, human warmth, quality of life to thousands and thousands of men and women in their homes, especially in very humble homes, those who never in their life had a hand, a word, treatment with affection, love, closeness,” said Mr Maduro.

The Venezuelan president said that the programme that trained these doctors would be expanded to train more specialists and ensure access to a doctor for every Venezuelan, with a goal set at 60,000 new doctors to be trained in the coming years.