Recent publications on the Kyrgyz health system presented at WHO meeting in Bishkek
Kyrgyzstan faces health workforce shortages and health financing challenges, but has embraced far-reaching health reforms, recent documents on the country’s health system published by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies revealed.
Representatives from WHO, the Kyrgyz Ministry of Health, external development partners and the Observatory gathered in Bishkek on 6 July 2023 at the Development Partners Coordination Committee meeting and discussed the findings of three key Observatory publications: the 2022 Health System Review, the 2022 Health System Summary, and the 2022 Health Systems in Action Insight.
The documents, developed in collaboration with the WHO Country Office in Kyrgyzstan, describe key features of the Kyrgyz health system and recent health reforms, and provide an assessment of the performance of the country’s health system.
Some of the key insights emerging from the publications and the discussions at the meeting were:
- Financing relies to a large extent on out-of-pocket payments
- Medication remains the biggest driver of out-of-pocket payments in inpatient, outpatient and self-treatment settings.
- There are geographical imbalances in the availability of health workers.
- Family doctors are lacking, in particular in rural areas.
- Far-reaching health reform programmes have been embraced.
- The current “Healthy Person – Prosperous Country” programme (2019–2030) emphasizes the importance of health for achieving economic development.
The Special Representative of the WHO Regional Director in Kyrgyzstan, Shahin Huseynov introduced the meeting, which was organized by the WHO Country Office in Kyrgyzstan.. Bernd Rechel, Technical Officer at the Observatory presented the publications, followed by Aigul Abdrachmanova from the Ministry of Health who gave a presentation on the new Quality of Care and Patient Strategy and Implementation Road Map.
The meeting also included a presentation by Saltanat Moldoisaeva from the WHO Country Office on the introduction of a price control mechanism to improve access to essential medicines, followed by a final presentation on the Ministry of Health report on Official Development Assistance to the Health Sector of Kyrgyzstan in 2020.