Prague, Sept 12 (CTK) – The Czech Education Ministry wants to launch a programme in support of faculties of education and medicine as of the next academic year in order to boost the number of doctors, Minister Katerina Valachova said yesterday, adding that subsidies worth one billion crowns would be distributed.
The Education Ministry and the Health Ministry have been preparing a document that is to propose steps to raise the number of doctors in the country.
As a result of doctors’ ageing and retirement, the country may be short of up to 2,500 doctors as of 2020.
Of all categories of doctors, the highest average age is that of child practitioners, which reaches 57 now.
The Health Ministry wants to raise the number of medical faculties’ graduates by 25 percent.
According to the ministry’s statistics, about 1,060 students of medicine complete their studies in the Czech Republic annually, but only a part of them, who represent 850 full-time jobs, really start working as doctors afterwards.
($1=23.975 crowns)
