Today during a press conference following the meeting of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Minister of Healthcare Yelzhan Birtanov spoke about the ongoing reforms in the medical sphere and their impact on the quality of services.

Thus, the minister said that the country has a tendency to increase the speed of arrival of ambulances on calls.

"We adopted a new order for the ambulance, which regulated how the ambulance will respond to calls," the minister said.

According to him, today in Kazakhstan the number of calls for ambulance is 7-8 times higher than in developed countries. In this regard, the Ministry of Healthcare has taken measures to ensure that ambulance arrives faster and provides better medical care.

"In particular, the calls that do not pose a danger to the lives of patients will be forwarded to the polyclinics at the place of residence by the decision of a senior ambulance doctor," Yelzhan Birtanov said.

According to the Ministry of Healthcare, in each clinic there are appropriate district doctors who receive money to ensure that these patients are observed and treated at their place of residence.

After the measures taken in several regions there was an increase in the speed of arrival of ambulances to patients.

"For example, in Astana brigades began to be released, because they stopped going to measure pressure of people 5-6 times a day. This is not the work of an ambulance, it is the work of polyclinics. As a result, the speed of our arrival is improving and we can provide better medical care with a smaller number of brigades," the minister stressed.

He noted that the retraining of all ambulance teams has already begun according to the international standards of first aid and resuscitation.

Yelzhan Birtanov also talked about public-private partnership projects in the health sector. He said that in Kazakhstan since the beginning of this year, 16 contracts have been concluded within the framework of public-private partnership, several more projects are undergoing competition procedures.

The main examples of state support are the provision of land plots for new projects. In addition, local executive bodies will provide engineering networks to reduce the cost of a private partner in the construction of facilities.

"The most important thing is, of course, guarantees of long-term relations and, first of all, a guarantee that this facility will have a state order. The so-called guaranteed volume of consumption of medical services," the minister stressed.

Also, as an advantage of PPP, he noted the possibility of concluding long-term contracts up to 15-20 years. This allows the businessmen to more accurately plan the return on investment

In addition, according to Yelzhan Birtanov, the Ministry of Healthcare of the Republic of Kazakhstan plans to change the tariff policy in order to make additional coefficients for reimbursement of investment costs for PPP projects. In general, the implementation of PPP projects also leads to an increase in the level of medical services.