Head of State chairs cabinet meeting on specialised medicine in priority regions

In materialisation of the will to bring services of specialised medicine closer to the citizens, president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali chaired, on Friday, a cabinet meeting which looked at means to strengthen these services in priority inland regions of the country.

 CARTHAGE - In materialisation of the will to bring services of specialised medicine closer to the citizens, president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali chaired, on Friday, a cabinet meeting which looked at means to strengthen these services in priority inland regions of the country.

The meeting reviewed the indicators of the current state of affairs in specialised medicine, in terms of diversity of its specialisations, number of specialist doctors, their distribution in governorates and the priority areas’ needs in specialised medicine.

The meeting took note, in this connection, of the excellent level of medical specialties available in the country.

It also reviewed means to meet the immediate needs in specialist doctors in local hospitals, in such a manner as to bring specialised medical services closer to the citizens and reinforce health coverage.

In order to strengthen specialised medical services in the priority areas, the meeting took the following measures:

- Increase the number of posts dedicated to medicine internship competition from 450 to 500.

- Raise the number of recruitments authorised by the public health ministry, as of next year, with a view to strengthening potential hiring in specialised medicine.

- Increase the practice allowances in the priority areas.

- Generalise the practice allowances in the priority areas in order to encompass pneumophtisiology, emergency medicine and biology pharmacists.

- Replace doctors who leave the public sector with specialist doctors, while reviewing the distribution, whenever possible, for the benefit of the interior regions.

- Make sure that the potential doctors’ legal situation pertaining to the national service is regular, upon their recruitment or their setting up.

- See to it that the hiring of specialist doctors in regions take place as part of integrated health teams, and set up and develop local poles of specialised medicine.

- Consider the period of practice spent in the priority governorates as the double when counting the length of service.

The Head of State recommended to follow up these measures, in such a way as to ensure the implementation of the hoped-for objectives and make the most of the investments made in the field of modernisation of health infrastructure and in setting up of modern medical equipments in inland areas.

He also recommended to endeavour to consolidate the experience of the local health care services’ sponsoring by the health care departments in university hospital centres.

TAP