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The Minister of Health, Alexandru Rafila, declared on Thursday, in Botosani, that there is a national shortage of doctors for certain specialties, including those of emergency medicine and family medicine.
He specified that, as far as primary medicine is concerned, the medical corps is aging, and hundreds of localities do not have a doctor.
"It is a phenomenon at the national level for certain types of specialties that are in short supply. The human resources strategy must keep pace with the strategy related to the development of medical assistance services. We cannot erect buildings without qualified medical personnel. Of course we have some tools now at hand, digitization, telemedicine, remote provision of medical services, especially for less accessible areas, but on the other hand there are specialties that serve critical points, such as emergency reception units, such as ambulance services, primary medical care, because, despite the apparently large number of 11,000 family doctors, not all localities, but hundreds of localities in Romania do not have primary medical care, and the medical staff is aged, with an average age of over 55 years," said Minister Rafila, Agerpres.ro informs.
According to him, the shortage of medical personnel with higher education cannot be covered in the short term, but he emphasized that the problem could be solved as a result of the implementation of a strategy of human resources in health, drawn up for the first time in Romania.
"We made a partnership with the universities of medicine and pharmacy in Romania, because a decision related to professional training must be made together with the professors who teach the doctors, respectively the medical assistants to work and connect to the technological developments that are extremely fast in medicine", added Alexandru Rafila.
The health minister inaugurated on Thursday the new Emergency Reception Unit at the "Mavromati" Emergency Hospital in Botosani, which was expanded and modernized based on a project with European co-financing worth 12.5 million lei.
