The initiative, developed by the Alto Alentejo Intermunicipal Community (CIMAA) in collaboration with the ULS, aims to showcase the “positive aspects” of the area to encourage health professionals, particularly young doctors, to settle there.

Speaking to the Lusa news agency, the president of CIMAA, Joaquim Diogo, explained that a multidisciplinary team had been set up for this purpose and that a portfolio had been created with “measures of interest” in the areas of culture, science, education, housing, transport and services, among others.

“We are in the final stages of completing this portfolio, and we are going to create a strategy to approach universities and higher education institutions to, in some way, charm and invite future doctors to get to know our territory in a different way,” he explained.

The strategy involves attracting young doctors as soon as they choose their internship period, but also ensuring they are aware of the quality of life that the region where they will be working has to offer.

"We want to show the good things our region has to offer, whether in terms of tranquillity, safety, [breaking] the myth that sometimes exists about the lack of services and offerings in some areas. We want to dispel these myths among young people and be able to say that our territory is absolutely unique," he added.

The president of CIMAA recalled that in the field of housing, “there are many municipalities” in the district of Portalegre that propose to create “collaborative housing with some refinement” so that doctors can have “a parallel offer” to their remuneration and service offer.

In recent years, he recalled, on the initiative of the municipalities and the Alto Alentejo Local Health Unit, “new health centres and new, modern facilities with all the necessary conditions” have been built, which was not the case seven or eight years ago, at a time of considerable shortages.

Joaquim Diogo, who is also mayor of Crato, pointed out that the network of health centres in the district of Portalegre has been “almost completely renovated”, and that the district capital’s hospital is also undergoing renovation in several areas and is the subject of a project aimed at expanding its structure to create a health campus.

“We must continue to invest in infrastructure, but then bring together a series of synergies that can, in some way, attract young doctors to come to this region,” he concluded.