Severe lack of pediatricians in Southwestern Bulgaria. In the Blagoevgrad and Kyustendil regions, there is not a single pediatrician with a narrower specialty who treats patients up to the age of 16.
Only four are pediatric specialists for both areas.
Angelina Filipova is the grandmother of a 14-year-old child who has been suffering from stomach pain for several months.
"He can't even go to school because it's difficult, he's calm for two or three days and then for a whole week he has an upset stomach, it's completely impossible for him to leave the house, he's afraid, we don't know what kind of diet he should be on" ;, comments Angelina Filipova.
After the GP refers them to a children's gastroenterologist, Angelina realizes that the nearest such specialist is in Sofia.
"There is no pediatric gastroenterologist in Blagoevgrad. In Sofia, it is very difficult to register, without an appointment no one accepts you. It's absurd, it's very difficult," added Angelina Filipova.
It turns out that there are few pediatric gastroenterologists in Sofia as well, and it is almost impossible for them to make visits to smaller cities, even in emergency cases. "I suppose that even in Sofia they could be counted on the fingers of my two hands. There are big problems to find a child if he is in a state of emergency," said Dr. Silvia Stefanova, Association of General Practitioners in Kyustendil, quoted by BNT.
Apart from gastroenterologists, Southwestern Bulgaria lacks all other narrowly profiled children's specialties, with the exception of psychologists and pulmonologists.
"This is the result of very bad politics. In the last 25 years at least, there have been very few places for specialists and few bases for the specialization of these people and humiliatingly low pay," commented Dr. Silvia Stefanova.
The solution to the problem depends on the Ministry of Health, doctors believe.
"More places for specialization, facilitation of specialization, scholarships for specialists, decent pay and a place to work,", Dr. Silvia Stefanova also said.
The provision of pediatricians in Bulgaria is approaching the average for the European Union, the Ministry of Health told BNT. From there, they explained to us that in order to have enough specialists, they are developing long-term personnel policies. Part of them is a project to promote specialization in deficient children's specialties. The implementation of the project will continue until 2028.
"The allocated funding is in the amount of BGN 15,000,000, and the implementation will continue until the end of 2028. This project will mainly finance pediatric specialties, such as pediatric gastroenterology, pediatric cardiology, pediatric neurology, pediatric health care and etc.", the Ministry of Health states.