The Prime Minister of the Zenica-Doboj Canton, Nezir Pivić, addressed the participants of the round table on the health care of Roma children, which was organized by the Institute for Health and Food Safety Zenica (INZ) with the support of UNICEF and in cooperation with the Roma community and local partners, including the Municipality of Kakanj.
The round table “Improving health care and solving the issue of health insurance for Roma children – examples of good practice and experience” was organized with the aim of jointly reviewing the challenges and finding concrete solutions for the health insurance of Roma children, especially in the context of access to vaccination and health services for children who do not attend primary school.
Prime Minister Pivić congratulated the organizers and partners for opening an important topic that concerns the very core of social responsibility – health care for children, which, he said, is not a matter of political commitment, but a legal and constitutional obligation. However, he added, practice shows that in certain situations this right is interrupted, most often due to administrative reasons or uneven application of regulations.
– The government of the Zenica-Doboj Canton believes that no child should remain outside the health care system. We must pay special attention to children from socially sensitive groups, including the Roma population, where administrative obstacles and systemic deficiencies are most evident. We see this round table as an opportunity to jointly look at where the system fails in practice and how, within the existing legal and financial framework, these challenges can be overcome. The solutions must be realistic, implementable and sustainable, with clearly defined competences of the institutions – said Prime Minister Pivić.
He pointed out that the Government of the Zenica-Doboj Canton is ready to consider concrete and useful guidelines resulting from this meeting and, in cooperation with the relevant ministries, the Health Insurance Institute, local communities and international partners, come up with solutions that will remove obstacles and enable Roma children, as well as all other children without health insurance, access to vaccinations and all other health services.
Among others, the ministers of health, dr. Aida Salčinović, Labor, Social Policy and Refugees Antonio Šimunović and Justice and Administration Nebojša Nikolić.
