Average Doctor Salaries in Peru

When I hear "Peru", my associative memory replays the trivia I had read off Harrison's Internal Medicine about the Origins of the Anti-Malarial Quinine, which as many of you would know, is derived from the barks of the Cinchona tree. Cinchona was called so because in 1638, Anna del Chinchon, the wife of the viceroy of Peru, was cured of her malaria by the bark from this tree ! Lol...And you thought Peru should rather be reminding me of the famous "Machu Picchu" mountains...well....am a boring guy.


Peru is a country that sits in South America with the great Pacific Ocean on its west and with Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile bordering the rest as neighbors. The Peruvian currency is called Nuevos Soles and 1 US Dollar roughly equals about 3.25 Soles.
Snailing along this blog's mission to sort of index doctor salaries around the world, I thought I would make a mention about an article on Peruvian doc's salaries in the Lancet.

A 2008 Lancet article observed that, by 2004, Physician salaries in Peru have actually dwindled to 1/4th the average levels in 1976, after adjusting the time-value of money. The survey revealed an average annual salary of 1930 soles, which is about 670$ a year. This forces many physicians to follow the practice of Dual Practice...i.e. hold two jobs or have a public job along with a private practice on the side, and also forces them to go on strikes now and then. Amusing that the country began with private docs offering public service as goodwill and then after a national health system was implemented in 1968, it is now public docs scrambling to maintain some private practice on the sidelines...

With 50% Peruvians living in poverty, the per capita income in 2006 for Peru still managed to be around 3,374 - yeah, due to a vastly inequitable distribution of wealth. Peru spends very little on health care, as opposed to the US which spends more than 18% of its GDP on the same.

Read the Lancet Article Here

US physician salaries, on the other hand, saw a recent 4 to 5% increase in 2008 over year 2007 and it is possible for a Dermatology Professor to make $4 Million a Year ..lol, now that was me being tongue-in-cheek ...but hey, it's true - Read here about Dr. David N. Silvers

Also Read: