The objective of this paper is to present the experience of the Training Programme for Local Agents of Vigilance in Health (Proformar) with its theoretical, methodological and operational bases. Proformar is a pedagogical proposal that combines ordinary classroom education with remote education as a methodological strategy to carry out a mass learning/teaching process. The aim of the programme is the nationwide re-training of the 26,660 old "guards of endemic diseases" from the National Foundation of Health (Funasa) - whose function is to work in the rural areas in the control of diseases and epidemics - and, in a next stage, in cooperation with states and municipalities, another 42,000 workers. We have used as reference the historic landmarks of the Sanitary Reform, in the area of health, and the Law of Guidelines and Bases (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases) in education to clarify the conceptual and didactic pedagogical choices in the elaboration of the programme by Polytechnic Health School Joaquim Venâncio/Fiocruz. Finally, we look at the processes of decentralization and municipalization as essential strategies for the consolidation of the Brazilian Health System (SUS) in a national dimension, giving emphasis to the need to clearly distinguish these two processes in terms of their ends and purposes.
professional training in health; health vigilance; remote education; decentralization; municipalization
