A contract on the grant from the European Social Fund was signed by Kujundzic, Croatian Medical Association (HLK) president Trpimir Goluza and Croatian Employment Service acting director Ante Loncar. The funds were secured in the Operational Programme Efficient Human Resources 2014-2020.
Kujundzic said the project would contribute to keeping physicians in Croatia and providing patients with the best health care.
Goluza said Croatia lacked a strategy for comprehensive, continuous and objectively evaluated training of general and family physicians. The HLK has conceived a four-year training programme envisaging four modules and 160 workshops, he added.
A member of the Croatian Family Medicine Coordination executive board, Ines Balint, said there was a lack of 400 primary health care physicians and that an even bigger problem was the fact that the average age of a family physician was 52, as 30% of them would retire in three years and there were no young physicians to take their place. "We are especially late with family medicine residencies," she added.
(EUR 1 = HRK 7.45)