Countries in South America by doctors

Countries in South America by doctors, World Bank, mostly 2023

#	Country	Per 1,000 people	Year	Region
1	Argentina	5.11	2023	South America
2	Uruguay	4.67	2022	South America
3	Paraguay	3.89	2022	South America
4	Chile	3.33	2023	South America
5	Colombia	2.54	2023	South America
6	Brazil	2.36	2023	South America
7	Ecuador	2.31	2020	South America
8	Peru	1.69	2023	South America
9	Guyana	1.39	2020	South America
10	Suriname	1.36	2023	South America
11	Bolivia	1.28	2021	South America

No World Bank figure for Venezuela.

Questions

Which country in South America has the most doctors per person?

Argentina has the most doctors per person in South America: 5.11 doctors per 1,000 people (2023). Next come Uruguay (4.67 doctors per 1,000 people) and Paraguay (3.89 doctors per 1,000 people).

Which country in South America has the fewest doctors per person?

Bolivia, with 1.28 doctors per 1,000 people (2021).

What is the typical doctors of a country in South America?

The median of the 11 countries in South America is 2.36 doctors per 1,000 people: half are above it, half below. The median, not the average, because a few countries at the top would drag an average far above almost everyone.

Where do the figures come from?

Physicians — general practitioners and specialists — for every 1,000 people. Source: World Bank, mostly 2023. Only independent states are ranked; territories are listed separately. A country’s continent follows Natural Earth; the handful of island states it files under the open ocean are placed by their UN subregion.

Source: World Bank (CC BY 4.0). Figures more than 5 years older than the newest are left out rather than shown beside current ones. Countries sharing a value share a rank. All sources.