Transition and public health in the Slovak republic

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7510.213

BMJ 2005;331:213-215 (23 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7510.213

Education and debate

Transition and public health in the Slovak republic

Gabriel Gulis, associate professor¹, Jarmila Korcova, deputy head², Peter Letanovsky, research assistant³, Daniela Marcinkova, research and teaching assistant²

¹ Unit of Health Promotion Research, Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Niels Bohrsvej 9-10, 6700 Esbjerg, Denmark, ² Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Faculty of Health Care and Social Work, Trnava University, Trnava, Slovak Republic, ³ Ministry of Health, Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Correspondence to: G Gulis ggulis@health.sdu.dk

The socioeconomic and environmental changes arising from transitionhave affected public health. Improvement has started but thereis still a long way to go

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Introduction

Like other Central and Eastern European countries, the SlovakRepublic is in transition from a directive, centralised, politicalsystem to a democratic, market economy based system. However,since the break-up of the former Czechoslovakia on 1 January1993, the republic is also undergoing transition from the federalsystem of policy making and leadership to an independent sovereignstate (infrastructural transition). The development of a fullyindependent health sector within the Slovak Republic has posedserious challenges for public health policy makers and practitioners.We describe the main steps and changes during transition anddiscuss the achievements and tasks ahead.

Legislative reform

In 1994, an update of the act for the protection of human healthrestructured the public health system. Responsibility was delegatedto the Ministry of Health, the main hygienist of the SlovakRepublic, and regional hygienists. The National Office of PublicHealth currently has 36 regional offices. A new public health. . . [Full text of this article]