Family Medicine Development in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country in Southeastern Europe located on the Balkan Peninsula. During communist rule, the health care system in the former Yugoslavia was centralized. Primary medical care was provided by specialists in centralized polyclinics or health centers, and in smaller community-based clinics called ambulates, staffed by general practitioners (without formal residency training) and nurses. With the end to the war in 1995, the BiH government, with support from international organizations and multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, began a health care reform program to restructure its health system. The reforms aimed to develop a new model of PHC centered on family medicine. The Family Medicine Development Project in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an initiative funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) that was sparked by a visit to Queen's University by the Dean of the Medical School in Sarajevo in 1995. He came specifically to encourage the Department of Family Medicine to look into the possibility of helping our country establish an effective primary care infrastructure based on the Canadian family medicine model. The project introduced family medicine into undergraduate curricula, established three-years long program of residency in family medicine in 1999, created departments of family medicine in all medical schools, helped with the process of establishing a professional college of family doctors, worked with ministries of health to establish supportive policies for these activities, and regularly provided continuing medical education programs for family practitioners during the 13 years of the project.