Bohatyriova: Number of family doctors to grow to 30000 by end of 2020
The number of family doctors in Ukraine will rise to 30,000 by the end of 2020, Health Minister Raisa Bohatyriova has said.
“This year we will increase the number of family doctors (trained and retrained) to 3,500 people. The number of general practitioners should grow by 22,000-25,000 by the end of 2020, to 30,000 people,” she said at press conference in Kyiv on Monday.
Bohatyriova said that any specialist could be retrained as a family doctor.
“There’s currently demand for 6,000-7,000 general practitioners in pilot regions,” she said, noting that this issue will be resolved through making a state order for these professionals at medical higher educational institutions, and by retraining other doctors.
Bohatyriova said that access to pediatricians and obstetricians/gynecologists in the first chain of medical care would be preserved.
“We believe that general practitioners should be sent to specialized medical supervision [of the second chain]. A person should decide himself where to go, apart from dentists and obstetricians/gynecologists,” she said.