LONDON — The picturesque fishing village of Mevagissey in southwestern England has a problem: This spring, the local doctor announced that she would quit, leaving 5,300 area residents facing a future without easy access to medical care.
While many small towns might have bemoaned the decline of rural life and wailed about funding cuts, villagers in Mevagissey were determined to avoid losing the service. So a handful started a social media campaign under the hashtag #WillYouBeMyGP to recruit a replacement, producing a bright promotional video to draw attention to Mevagissey’s attractions.
The National Health Service has been struggling to recruit G.P.s — as primary care doctors are known in Britain — and it has been even more difficult to entice graduates to move out of big towns and cities, with doctors who practice alone also facing a greater administrative workload. Cuts to public services imposed by the austerity policies of successive Conservative governments have also been felt particularly sharply in rural areas.
The Mevagissey campaign sought to raise awareness of the problem in the village, rally others to the cause, and, ultimately, identify candidates — as well as publicize the issue more broadly.
Residents have some experience of fighting against dwindling local services: When the village lost its post office three years ago, the community petitioned successfully to get it back.
James Mustoe, a local council official who helped organize the latest campaign, said the village’s strong sense of community would help in its fight to keep its services.
A major part of the campaign, which is called Mevagissey S.O.S. — for Save Our Surgery — is a three and a half minute video posted on Facebook showing the colorful stone houses of the village perched on the hillsides under a clear blue sky, with boats peppered about the small harbor.
The region has plenty of other selling points. Cornwall, the county containing Mevagissey, is among the sunniest regions in Britain and is a popular tourist destination. The fishing trade in the village is also one of the fastest-growing in the region, Mr. Mustoe said.
“We need a G.P. here to come to our beautiful community and to look after us,” says Michael Bunney, a local parish councilor, in the campaign video.
Mr. Mustoe said there had been 10 direct responses from interested doctors, with others contacting the N.H.S. to inquire about the position. “From the day it went out there, we have been having responses and that has been amazing,” he said.
In an attempt to tackle the problem of attracting doctors to rural areas, the National Health Service offers a one-off payment of 20,000 pounds, or about $25,000, to trainee doctors who agree to move to some of the regions in most need. (A list of those communities on the service’s website includes locations around the country but not in Cornwall.)
Last week, Pulse, an industry publication for general practitioners, said that the closing of primary care providers in Britain had risen almost eightfold in six years, affecting nearly two million patients since 2013.
Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairwoman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said in an emailed statement that the closing of a doctor’s office, or surgery, can have serious ramifications for rural communities.
“G.P. surgeries will only hand back their contract to the N.H.S. as an absolute last resort, but in more remote areas, staffing issues are an incredibly serious concern and can simply make running a practice unsustainable,” Professor Stokes-Lampard said.
“It’s a genuine shame because being a rural G.P. has many unique benefits,” she added. “Not just in terms of working in a beautiful environment with an often tight-knit community, but exciting challenges that doctors simply wouldn’t face in urban areas.”
In an email on Thursday, N.H.S. England declined to comment on the Mevagissey case, but said that spending to “increase resilience” in primary care services had been increased.
The service also disputed the figures published by Pulse, saying that there had been fewer closings in England in the 2017-18 financial year than in the previous year.