TIRANA, July 17 /ATA/ Minister of Education and Sports, Evis Kushi, presented at the Parliamentary Committee for Legal Affairs, Public Administration and Human Rights the draft law on the differential treatment of students attending the integrated second cycle study in General Medicine at Albanian public institutions.
Speaking about the context which necessitates the urgency of this draft law, Kushi said that the draft law is proposed for two reasons, first to develop new mechanisms to motivate doctors to continue working and contributing in Albania and secondly to meet the needs for doctors, to fill the shortages in these institutions and to guarantee even distribution in the whole country, including remote areas in dire need of medical staff.
“However, if we make a reference to OECD data, it turns out that by 2022 the total number of doctors who graduated in Albania, but who live and work in OECD countries, is over 1200 doctors. The trend is towards emigration to Germany, USA, Canada, Italy and UK. The rate of emigration is estimated to be 19.8%, i.e. about 20%. In a nutshell, for every 10 new doctors, two of them leave for foreign countries,” she said.
Kushi added, “there are 5,400 doctors working in our health institutions, which can be translated into a great need to cover the population with doctors, this indicator is 1.93 doctors for every 1,000 thousand inhabitants, which still falls far from the OECD countries, but even lower than the indicator of other countries in the region.”
“Specifically, countries in the region have 2.6 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants. Our ambitions are to approach the OECD countries, where this indicator is 3.6 doctors for every 1000 inhabitants. Our indicator of 1.93 is still low, which makes it necessary to take other additional measures that have been introduced in recent years,” Kushi emphasized.
“Specifically, to meet the need of the system on the one hand and to prevent the drain of doctors to foreign countries on the other, the incremental increase of quotas for the General Medicine program has started over the years. A few years ago, the quota was 250 for the first year, at the Faculty of Medicine, meanwhile through the gradual increase, we aim for this quota to reach 500 in 2024-2025. But even this number cannot be increased without criteria. Quotas are always evaluated depending on the infrastructure and academic staff and many other indicators,” said Kushi.
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