Saudi Arabia needs more doctors and a healthcare group has sent recruitment consultants to Portugal to sign up 30 more doctors on tax-free salaries of up to €11,000 a month, plus free housing.
The offer from a "prestigious multinational group of hospitals" has already attracted 200 applicants.
André Leite is the man in charge of recruitment for FFF Healthcare and he is looking for certain skills whether the doctor is working or retired, and is not concerned whether working doctors are currently in the public or the private healthcare sector.
It seems that the €11,000 on offer is the basic rate as doctors with certain skill sets and experience will command significantly higher salaries.
The above average accommodation on offer will be tailored to single doctors or doctors who wish to take their families along for the luxury ride.
Leite says the 30 current posts are based mostly in the FFF hospitals in Riyadh and Dammam and candidates need to have a minimum of three years experience in general surgery, orthopaedics, obstetrics and gynaecology, ophthalmology, urology, otolaryngology, cardiothoracic surgery, interventional cardiology, anaesthesiology, critical care medicine, embryology, dermatology, neurosurgery, nephrology or plastic surgery.
Of the 200 plus applicants, an initial 60 were selected for interview and those chosen will be on three year rolling contracts with free health care, insurance, 44 days of paid leave and airfares back home in addition to performance bonuses.
In February, 60 health professionals were recruited for hospitals at the American owned Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi.
The American health group management explained that it wants to recruit from Portugal "in recognition of the excellence of the training in Portugal, as well as the quality of people working in healthcare, including nurses and support staff."
With Portugal’s national health system in a dire state, especially in the Algarve region, the lure of vastly increased, tax-free salaries will be too much to bear for many healthcare professional thus widening the gap between the number of doctors and nurses needed and the number that are working.
Portugal's answer to the lack of doctors; recruit more from Cuba on salaries three times those of doctors working in Portugal's national health service.
Of the €5,900 a month that was being paid in 2009 for each Cuban doctor, the doctor received around €900 and the Cuban health service received the balance of around €5,000 per doctor per month.
The rate was dropped to €4,230 a month following a review in 2011 but since 2009 the scheme has cost the Portuguese taxpayer an estimated €12 million.
