Belarus has overtaken almost the all countries in the world in the healthcare sector, political scientist Petr Petrovsky said on the air of the talk show “Budni” on February 1.
We are among the top four in the world in terms of availability of medical services. In the top of four. This is the fact. What is accessibility to medical services? This is when you don’t have to make an appointment with someone unknown a year in advance,” he said in an episode entitled “The Suffering of Europe”.
A similar fact was announced by The Scientific Research Institute of Economics of the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Belarus in December 2023. However, according to the data, Belarus shares first place with Brunei and Canada in terms of access to healthcare systems.
As Minister of Health in 2015, Vasily Zharko reported the same fact, citing data from the World Health Organization (WHO). BIC's journalists studied WHO’s reports and found no confirmation of those statements.
According to information on the WOH’s website, Canada ranks first in the UHC Service Coverage Index. It is followed by South Korea, Iceland, and Singapore. Belarus is in 49th place.
This index is calculated using 14 different indicators, which include “opportunity to access medical services”. Petrovsky probably had it in his mind. However, according to this indicator, Belarus is in 9th place in the world.