Belarus

The population of Belarus has extensive entitlements to health care, guaranteed by Article 45 of the Constitution. Entitlement is based on citizenship and the system is universal.

The health system is hierarchical, and its organization is based on territorial administrative division. The Ministry of Health plays a key role, setting priorities, developing policies, and determining services and payment levels, which regional and district health care departments implement at their respective levels. The Ministry of Health also directly funds highly specialized hospitals providing tertiary care. 

The health system is mainly funded by the state through general taxation and out-of-pocket payments. Most revenue for health is collected by local governments from state-owned enterprises, companies and individual and pooled at the district level. Some of these local revenues are sent to the national level, which then allocates them to the Ministry of Health for pooling. The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance present an agreed budget to the government, based on the policy agenda and the share of government spending directed towards health that has been determined by the President and Parliament. User charges are applied to most outpatient medicines (with exemptions for some conditions), dental and eye care, while certain individuals such as veterans, do not have to pay user charges for any health services or medicines.

The regional health care departments operate all hospitals and clinics within their region. There are no private hospitals or primary care facilities, but there are private diagnostic centres. There is an extensive primary health care network of providers throughout Belarus, which has two forms of service provision: traditional polyclinics in the cities and outpatient clinics and feldsher-midwife (akusher) points (FAPs) in the rural areas. At the secondary level of care, there are district and regional hospitals: district hospitals provide general secondary care services while regional hospitals deal with more complex cases and offer a wider choice of care.  At the same time, each district and region have an outpatient polyclinic, which delivers specialized secondary care for patients in the community.