Prague, Jan 22 (CTK) – The number of newly enrolled students of medical faculties should be ideally growing by 15 percent annually, Czech Health Minister Miloslav Ludvik (Social Democrats, CSSD) told the commercial television station Prima yesterday.
The specific numbers of enrolled students may depend on the capacity of the classrooms and laboratories. There may be 150-200 of them annually, Ludvik said.
Ludvik said medical faculties should not reject the applicants who passed the entry exams for capacity reasons.
“It must be stipulated what it means to pass the entrance examinations. This must be done by the universities themselves,” Ludvik said.
The faculties will need 460 million crowns for the education of more students. The money must be secured by the Education Ministry, Ludvik said.
Czech universities are annually left by 1050 graduates of medical faculties, 820 of whom are Czechs, Ludvik said.
Ludvik said more doctors than needed were serving in Czech hospitals. Abroad, this is often done by doctors serving at home, while being accessible on the phone, he added.
The Czech borderland in particular suffers from a lack of clinics, Ludvik said.
“Czech doctors are wrongly distributed. The access to health care in the borderland is much worse than in the rest of the country,” he added.
Ludvik said more money to the health care would result from an increase in the payment for the policyholders paid by the state.
He said he had agreed with Finance Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) that the payment should be growing by 3.5 billion crowns annually in the next three years.
Ludvik dismissed the patients’ direct payment of any health services. He said this was impossible due to low salaries.
($1 = 25.414 crowns)
