Healthcare in Croatia

Croatia has a universal health care system that helps make sure everyone can get medical help when they need it. This system started a long time ago, with laws from 1891 that made sure factory workers and craftsmen had some kind of health insurance. Today, all people in Croatia are covered by a basic health insurance plan. This plan is provided by law and managed by the Croatian Health Insurance Fund. In 2012, the money spent each year on required health care reached 21 billion kuna, which is about 2.8 billion euro. This shows how important and big the health care system is in Croatia.

Expenditure

Healthcare spending in Croatia makes up a small part of private insurance and public funds. In 2012, the country used about 6.8% of its total money (called GDP) for healthcare. This was less than the about 8% used in 2008, when most healthcare money came from public sources. Croatia’s life expectancy was around the middle of countries worldwide, with men living about 75.6 years and women about 81.4 years. The country also had a low number of babies who didn’t survive their first year, with only 6 out of every 1,000 births not living past that point.

Institutions

Croatia has many healthcare places, including 79 hospitals and clinics with 25,285 beds. These hospitals help more than 760,000 patients each year. Some hospitals are owned by the government, and some are owned by the Counties of Croatia. There are also 5,792 private offices where doctors work, and altogether, there are 46,020 health workers, including 10,363 doctors.

There are 79 emergency medical service units that helped people over one million times in 2012. Croatia was ranked 16th in Europe for health care, especially for doing well with kidney transplants, doing more than 50 for every million people each year.

Health

In 2011, the most common reason people in Croatia passed away was heart problems, especially for women. Cancer was also a frequent cause. In 2012, only a small number of people in Croatia were affected by a serious illness called HIV/AIDS, and very few passed away from it. Many adults in Croatia smoke, and a good number also have a higher weight than is healthy. Croatia had one of the lowest rates of deaths from diseases that spread easily between people in all of Europe in 2015.

COVID-19 pandemic

Main article: COVID-19 pandemic in Croatia

On 25 February 2020, Croatia reported its first case of the illness. A 26-year-old man who had recently been in Milan, Italy, tested positive and was taken to the University Hospital for Infectious Diseases Dr. Fran Mihaljević in Zagreb, Croatia.

The government created a special team to manage the situation. This team included health experts and leaders who worked together to protect the country. They introduced rules to keep people apart to stop the illness from spreading and later started programs to help people get vaccinated.