ZAGREB, August 16, 2019 - There are 15,047 physicians employed in the Croatian health system according to data from the Croatian Institute of Public Health (HZJZ), while the Croatian Medical Chamber (HLK) says that its statistics show that 13,613 doctors are currently hired in Croatia, the Večernji List daily said in an article in its issue on Friday.
Thus, the discrepancy between these numbers is 1434, which prompted the daily newspaper to ask the HLK about that.
The chamber insists that it provides figures about the currently employed doctors and those 13,613 include 271 retired doctors who work now four hours per working day.
The daily says that it could not obtain the answer from the HZJZ whose statistics referred to the number of employed physicians at the end of 2018.
The HZJZ data also show that the number of employed doctors in 2018 rose by 200 in comparison to 2017.
The daily also says that the HZJZ data mean that Croatia has one doctor per 272 inhabitants, which is around the European average.
According to data provided by the European Union's statistical office in September last year, the number of physicians per 100,000 inhabitants is the highest in Austria, 509.7, while Croatia has 319.1 doctors per 100,000 inhabitants,
Bulgaria is the EU country with the largest number of dentists in relation to the overall population, 105.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, while Croatia has 79.5 dentists per 100,000 inhabitants, which puts it in the upper part of the rankings. Poland has the lowest ratio - 33.2 dentists per 100,000 inhabitants.
Life expectancy in Croatia is 78.2 years, which is slightly below the EU average as the expected average life span in the EU is 81 years.
More medical news can be found in the Lifestyle section.
