Czechia is running low on paediatricians. What’s the impact?

When your child isn’t feeling well, the next step any parent would take after over the counter medicine would be a paediatrician – but that’s not so easy any more in Czechia. Today, many Czech parents don’t have a general practitioner for their child, meaning more end up going to emergency rooms for more minor issues, causing a backlog in hospitals. Czech Radio reporter Lucie Pávová told me more about the issue.

“The main problem is that the paediatricians in the Czech Republic are getting older. Right now, there are about 2,000 of them – but half of them are older than 60. This is a big problem, especially because younger paediatricians don’t want to work in smaller towns, cities, and villages. There is a small town called Tachov near the German border – and the issue is that the few paediatricians who are working in the town are older and will retire soon, and no one younger wants to replace them.”

See the rest here.

Author: Amelia Mola-Schmidt