10 March 2025, 09:00

Vice-premier speaks about efforts to provide equal access to social services in Belarus

An archive photo

MINSK, 10 March (BelTA) – The equal access to social services in Belarus is being provided in various ways, Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Karanik said on the air of the Belarus 1 TV channel, BelTA reports.

“As far as equal access [to social services regardless of place of residence] is concerned, we need to understand that this goal is being achieved in various ways, on multiple levels. As far as healthcare is concerned, we must make sure that a person will be able to get basic medical services at their place of residence and specialized care within an hour. Therefore, work is underway to train primary care specialists, starting from district centers and ending with rural first-aid stations," Vladimir Karanik noted.

Another area of work is the re-equipment and staffing of inter-district centers and reference clinics with specialists. “Wherever a citizen lives, there should be an MRI scanner and an angiograph within 70 km from their place of residence, and a CT scanner within 50-60 km. Our task is to create optimal logistics to deliver patients to these diagnostic facilities. It will take about the same time for a resident of Minsk to get to the nearest multidisciplinary hospital and for a resident of a small district to get to the district center. Further logistics will be provided by the health care system,” he emphasized.

The same applies to education, Vladimir Karanik added: “This is the transportation of students and the improvement of physical infrastructure of schools.”

Speaking about successful practices of Grodno in this field (previously Vladimir Karanik was Grodno Oblast governor), which the deputy prime minister would like to scale up to other regions, he noted that a good level of interaction had been built in Grodno Oblast. “Social issues were resolved through joint efforts, with the involvement of funds from the central, regional and local budgets. Such consolidated work allowed many infrastructure projects to be implemented much faster than if we had waited for full funding from the central budget. Or these problems would have been solved purely at the expense of the region, without attracting local resources,” he stated.