“An extensive social policy is nowadays a feature of a truly modern state. It also includes broadly defined issues of health care and preventive health care”, said Polish President Andrzej Duda during the inauguration of the 2023/2024 academic year of the Silesian Medical University in Katowice.

“You are representatives of science, in which the final and hard criterion for evaluation is the possibility of effective application of theses, discoveries and techniques in practice. I am even more pleased to be able to speak today in this esteemed forum about the significant progress that has been made in our country’s health policy in recent years. In 2015, public expenditure on health care amounted to almost PLN 80 billion; in 2023, it is already PLN 165 billion, which means a more than twofold increase”, said the President.

Andrzej Duda stressed that in recent years, several laws concerning the use of these funds have come into force, which were prepared thanks to the cooperation with experts sitting on the NRR Health Care Council. They include the laws on the National Oncology Strategy, the Medical Fund and the law introducing the ’75+ Centres’.

During his speech, the President noted that the ‘Healthy Life’ project implemented by the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland in cooperation with, among others, the Ministry of Health, the National Health Fund and the Ministry of State Assets is attracting great interest. The project provides, among other things, the opportunity for free medical consultations and preventive examinations.

The rector of the Medical University of Silesia, Professor Tomasz Szczepański, emphasised during the inauguration of the academic year that the university is constantly developing and that its new branch in Bielsko-Biała, where 75 students were enrolled in the medical faculty, has been operating since October.

Adrian Andrzejewski