The Moldovan health care system is facing a shortage of specialists, which has continued to grow in 2022, accentuating a trend that has been going on for at least a decade. According to data from the National Agency for Public Health, the medical system lacks in particular family doctors, anesthesiologists and radiologists, Radio Europa Liberă reported.

To contain the crisis, the Ministry of Health has announced a new initiative aimed at attracting doctors from the diaspora back home. This is a change that would allow these specialists to get involved in the management of hospitals in the country. Experienced doctors will be able to sit physically or online, full-time or part-time, on hospital boards. This would allow them to get involved in the development plans of the institutions, check the transparency of procurement and come up with proposals for removing deficiencies.

It is the first time that the Ministry comes up with such a proposal, betting that the possibility of remote involvement - online or in a hybrid format - will make the proposal even more attractive for those who have left abroad.

Europa Liberă asked several doctors who have been abroad for many years if they would accept the offer. Veaceslav Savan is an anesthesiologist-reanimatologist in France and left the country in 2016. Although he was working in a private medical institution, he left due to the lack of security for the future, for better working conditions and the possibility of continuous training in the chosen field, not because of his income. The doctor says that he would not agree to come to Moldova or participate part-time in the board of a medical institution for several reasons.

Victor Leșanu, a surgeon in France who left the country nine years ago, says that he would accept to be part of a hospital board or even to return to the country. “It’s an opportunity to make my contribution to the development of the medical field, here in the country”, declared Victor Leșanu.

The data of the Ministry of Health provided for Europa Liberă show that a good part of the young specialists and graduates who would fill the gaps in the labor market, choose to emigrate. Between 2019 and 2021, 867 graduates of the University of Medicine and Pharmacy left Moldova, most of them in 2019 - 455.