Approaching services to people is the main goal of the decentralisation reform. Healthcare should be more accessible together with the administrative, educational, communal and other services. The current situation with healthcare and transfer of hospitals, outpatient clinics and rural health posts is characterised in most amalgamated hromadas as a “cats’ concert”.

“As of 1 March 2018, six out of thirty-seven AHs of the Chernihiv Oblast have taken responsibility for the management of primary healthcare institutions,” said Nina Podkolzina, municipal services adviser of the Chernihiv Local Government Development Centre, established with the support of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme.

Though there are hromadas, where leaders have taken charge of the healthcare sector from the first days of amalgamation and established Healthcare Centres, as the Parafiyivska amalgamated hromada did in 2016.

The hromada has created all the conditions for providing high-quality healthcare services.There is a Healthcare Centre, located in the premises of the former rayon hospital, operating in Parafiyivka. It has two outpatient clinics in Parafiyivka and Ivanytsya, as well as four rural health posts in other hromada settlements, in subordination. "We tried to create all the conditions for people to be provided with high-quality primary healthcare," says Valentyna Karpenko, head of the Parafiyivska AH.

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