Last Friday 15/06/2018, the National Institute of Statistics released actualized data about the situation of the “Health Care Sector in Bulgaria“, and the conclusion that we quickly observed in the national news is:

50,7% of all doctors in Bulgaria are at least 55 years old and only the 22.1% below 45 years old.

This report at first glance could seem alarming and corroborate the general theory that in Bulgaria there is a shortage of doctors and medical personnel in general.

The medical professionals are just over 30.000 doctors. Most are general practitioners – 15%, followed by anesthetists – 5.3%, and surgeons – 5%, pediatricians – 4.9%, gynecologists – 4.8%, be last in Bulgaria as a specialty pathologist, with only 80 in the country and half of them in retirement age.

To be honest, if we read until here will be reasonable to think that Bulgarian health personnel is in a catastrophic stage, but with this information, we can’t be sure how is the genuine situation of the healthcare personnel in Bulgaria, we have to confront it with other countries and with the world.

Facts

At the end of 2017, a total of 42.7 physicians account for 10,000 people.

Most doctors are in the districts where there are medical universities and university hospitals – Pleven (59.7 per 10 000 of the population), Plovdiv (51.4), Sofia – town (51.0), Varna (49.8) and Stara Zagora (43.4).

The lowest is the indicator for the districts Kardzhali (26.4), Dobrich (27.2) and Pernik (27.3).

The other side of the coin is, if we compare the doctor situation in Bulgaria with the rest of the world, we can see that Bulgaria is well above world average (19 per 10 000 of the population), and in similar range than Germany (41 per 10 000 of the population) and Lithuania (43 per 10 000 of the population) and in the first 15 places in the world in the category. Even Kardzhali, which has the lowest quantity of doctors per 10.000 population in Bulgaria, is in greater condition than the world average and similar in range than Japan and South Korea.

For dentists, the ratio is 11.9 per 10 000 population, but in this case is very important to highlight than Over 93% of WHO (World Health Organization) Member States report to have less than 10 dentistry personnel per 10.000 population. which means Bulgaria is well into the first 10% of the world in this category.

We have been hearing during years that there is a huge shortage of nurses in Bulgaria, which could be a reality, since we all know about the immigration of nurses and doctors to Western European Countries since 1990, but isn’t in any way close to the to apocalyptic scenario that is presented in the media, in Bulgaria the Nursing and midwifery personnel is 53.18 per 10,000 population, similar than Italy 57.18 per 10,000 population and much better than Greece 34.0 per 10,000 population, and well above the world average of 31.43 per 10,000 population.

Of course, the reality of Bulgarian healthcare personnel is far from perfect or even appropriate, they face multiple challenges every day, beginning with the low salaries, aging infrastructure, stressful working conditions and the accelerated aging of Bulgarian population which include the Healthcare personnel.

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