Prague, July 20 (CTK) – Czech home and palliative care and mobile hospices will get 11.4 million crowns, 85 percent of which will be provided by the Swiss-Czech Cooperation Programme and 15 percent by the state, Stepanka Cechova, spokeswoman for the Health Ministry, told CTK yesterday.
The aim of the help is to support health care on the regional and national levels with emphasis on seniors, underprivileged citizens and the dying.
The process of approving projects financed from the “Swiss funds” is more complex than those subsidised from common European funds because they are approved on the national level, in Brussels and eventually by the Swiss Federal Council.
Experts say hospice care is underfinanced in the Czech Republic.
Cechova said the 11.4 million crowns amount was approved in the third and last call in the framework of the Swiss-Czech Cooperation Programme.
A total of 52 projects worth 245 million crowns have been supported within the programme.
The planned action plan of long-time, home and follow-up care until 2020 is also to be co-financed from European funds.
Long-term care is used by 13 percent of inhabitants of the Czech Republic. It is mainly drawn by seniors, with women over 80 constituting 40 percent of the users and men over 80 forming 24 percent.
Eighty percent of the 147,000 patients who used home care in 2011 were over 65.
($1=24.843 crowns)
