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ESTONIA

On September 14th Estonia votes for membership in EU. There have been hot discussions on all spheres of life, including health care. One of the questions where there have been several opinions is how many Estonian doctors and nurses will move to the other European countries and how many unemployed doctors from EU countries will come to Estonia.

In medical education no major changes since May 2003. The current year is the first year when graduates from the University started their residency training just after 6 years of studies as there is no internship-year any more between undergraduate studies and specialist training.

Therefore the competition for the residency posts was quite heavy this year.

In health care the accessibility to the specialist care is decreasing which puts an additional pressure to the primary health care system. Government has changed the system of compensation for drugs with the aim to use more generics and increase patients' own co-payment.

At the beginning of October 2003 the Baltic conference of Family Medicine will be organised in Tartu. In September 2004 there will be an international research training course Forum Balticum also in Tartu- this is a Scandinavian-Baltic meeting held every second year since 1994. So there are several activities going on to keep everybody busy.