Mandatory military training is planned to be renewed for students studying medicine and pharmaceutical specialties. It provided for draft law No. 13276, which proposes amendments to Article 11 of the Law of Ukraine “On Military Duty and Military Service” regarding the training of citizens under the program of reserve officers of the medical service.
The authors of the initiative point to an acute shortage of specialists in the military medical and military pharmaceutical spheres, which causes the need to expand the training of reserve officers of the medical service. It is proposed to increase the number of students who will undergo such training, as well as to expand the network of relevant departments in universities subordinate to the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education and Science.
Currently, the training of reserve officers is carried out at the departments of disaster medicine and military medicine in only 10 of the 15 medical higher education institutions under the Ministry of Health. Of the nine medical universities that work under the state order in the system of the Ministry of Education, only four have military training units.
Currently, training is voluntary and mostly on a contract basis — at the expense of individuals. This significantly limits the number of trained reserve officers ready to serve in a particular period. As of today, only about 5% of students of medical and pharmaceutical specialties are involved in the program. Only those who have entered into a contract with the Ministry of Defense for compulsory service after completing higher education and obtaining the primary officer rank receive training at the expense of the state budget.
In this regard, the draft law proposes to make military training for students of medical and pharmaceutical specialties mandatory – according to the full training program for reserve officers of the medical service (41 ECTS credits), providing for appropriate changes in the current legislation.
