The Syrian Ministry of Health launched the National Health Strategic Plan for 2026 to 2028, in cooperation with the Planning and Statistics Authority, as a national framework for the early recovery phase.
The plan was launched on Monday, 15 December, during a ceremony held at the National Library in Damascus, which Enab Baladi attended. It aims to rebuild the health system and strengthen its efficiency and effectiveness, in ways that positively reflect on citizens’ health.
Health Minister Musab al-Ali told journalists that the strategy had been prepared through intensive work and coordination with all local and international partners and relevant ministries over the past months. He said it is a medium term strategy for Syria’s health sector covering the next three years, aligned with the current reality, which he described as difficult and strained. He added that the plan is people focused and places citizens at the core of priorities.
According to the minister, the plan’s main goal is to deliver high quality medical services fairly and transparently to all citizens across the country. He said the plan is built around several main pillars, starting with rehabilitating health facilities, whether primary care facilities such as health centers and clinics, or secondary care facilities such as hospitals. It also includes developing and training health personnel, including doctors, resident physicians, nurses, and administrative staff, in addition to improving health management.
Al-Ali noted that pharmaceutical security and ensuring the availability of high quality medicines at affordable prices is a core part of the strategy, alongside digital transformation to improve the performance of all departments at the ministry and its directorates. The plan also includes establishing a specialized public health emergency unit, similar to those in advanced and neighboring countries, especially after the experience of the COVID 19 pandemic, to ensure the ministry’s readiness to respond to any future epidemics or health emergencies.
He also stressed the importance of governance and building effective partnerships with local and international civil society organizations, as well as Syrian communities abroad, to mobilize available capacities and resources. He underlined the need to strengthen health system financing to ensure sustainability.
Fair distribution of health facilities
The strategic plan aims to achieve a fair distribution of health services and facilities across all governorates and areas, ensuring that citizens can easily access essential secondary and specialized services. It also stipulates providing a main referral hospital in the center of each governorate, offering advanced services, alongside major hospitals in district centers, according to the Director of Health Facilities, Wasel al-Jark.
The plan is expected to expand services that patients currently struggle to access, such as cardiology, oncology, physiotherapy, and dialysis, ensuring reduced hardship both in access and cost, and enabling all citizens to obtain the most important health services they need. Al-Jark said hospitals will be selected based on population size, geographic distribution, and the availability of basic services, with an emphasis on equity and comprehensive coverage.
Facilities will also see more advanced organization of workflows and service delivery, along with the provision of modern medical equipment needed for diagnosis and treatment, to avoid long waiting lists for consultations, examinations, or diagnostic procedures. The plan also includes developing interventional services and surgical procedures.
According to Al-Jark, the plan also includes advanced patient follow up by making medical information available to both patients and doctors through an electronic health record, allowing patients to identify where services are available and go directly to the providers offering the care they need.
Advancing medical specialties
Eyad al-Baath, head of the Medical Specialties Authority, told Enab Baladi that the Ministry of Health’s strategic plan includes an ambitious vision to train medical staff and produce globally competitive graduates during medical training. This will be pursued through several core tracks, foremost among them the governance of medical training, aimed at addressing the ministry’s need for rare specialties that have historically seen low application rates.
The plan also includes increasing flexibility in the admissions system for medical specialties. Historically, the system imposed strict constraints that discouraged some doctors from applying to certain fields such as anesthesia, emergency medicine, family medicine, and forensic medicine, due to perceptions that these specialties were a dead end, given low financial returns and the weaker quality of training in the past.
Al-Baath said the authority’s role includes improving the quality of training in these fields, alongside making admissions more flexible, allowing doctors to change specialties under specific conditions and standards without losing the years they spent in their previous track. This is intended to encourage doctors to pursue rare specialties and reduce the sense of restriction, or professional “cage,” limiting future options.
He added that training primarily targets medical graduates during residency, the period between earning a general medical degree and obtaining a specialization certificate, stressing that the authority plays a key role in ensuring highly competent medical staff capable of improving health services nationwide.
The plan also includes establishing simulation tracks rather than relying solely on traditional specialty based training, to build an integrated clinical simulation system for training in every institution responsible for medical education, raising training quality and improving health workforce competence in a systematic and sustainable way.
In addition, there will be a major change in how resident physicians are assessed, shifting from a simplified model based on spending a set period and passing one or two exams, to a continuous formative assessment system based on ongoing evaluation throughout training, focused on equipping trainees with the practical skills and experience needed for professional practice.
Health insurance
The plan’s approach to health financing centers on diversifying funding sources for the health sector, creating multiple streams that enhance the financial sustainability of the system.
Salah al-Din al-Safadi, director of studies and research, said the issue is not only securing resources, but also how to spend them in the best possible ways to achieve the greatest benefit for health services, with direct impact on citizens.
On health insurance, al-Safadi stressed it will be an essential need in the coming phase. He said the Syrian scenario moving toward universal health coverage is based on two main ideas, increasing government health spending and developing a health insurance system capable of reaching the broadest possible segment of the population.
He noted there were commitments to increase government spending on the health sector. It currently stands at about 7.8 percent, up from 6.5 percent, with plans to gradually raise it to about 10.3 percent by 2030. He said developing a health insurance system is a key step toward this goal, even though it is difficult to provide precise figures at this stage.
Standardizing services through health centers
Under the plan, the Ministry of Health will adopt a comprehensive or essential package of health services, standardizing the type of services that should be delivered at every health center. This is intended to promote equity between rural and urban areas, strengthen care integration, and raise trust between citizens and health institutions.
Mohammad Salem, director of primary health care, said the package includes prevention, early detection, treatment, the provision of essential medicines, and a referral and follow up system. This should lead to greater stability and broader equity, while reducing pressure from complex health problems. He explained that integrated services in one location enable primary health care centers to address about 90 percent of the health issues individuals may face.
Services start from birth and include maternal care and pre and postnatal services, child care, community health, early cancer screening, medicines for chronic diseases, required treatments, and regular follow up. Salem said this level of integration strengthens trust and improves fairness in access to services.
Pharmaceutical security in Syria
Hani Baghdadi, director of pharmaceutical control, said shortages of some medicines and rising prices are only part of a larger problem related to pharmaceutical security in Syria. He said the issue has been heavily affected by the withdrawal of some global companies from the Syrian market and the previous damage to some local factories.
The strategic plan aims to address these challenges through several tracks, most notably localizing medicine production and supporting local industry, encouraging factories to manufacture high value medicines, and raising compliance with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) in Syrian facilities.
It also focuses on strengthening the drug regulatory system, including registering medicines under international standards and monitoring quality after products enter the market, as well as developing an integrated laboratory system for continuous quality control.
Baghdadi said another important track involves tightening import controls. The plan relies on “smart importing” to cover gaps only, not to compete with local production. Measures also include regulating pharmaceutical distribution chains and preventing the entry of smuggled or non compliant medicines.
He said the goal is sustainable access to medicines that are high quality, effective, and safe under global standards, at prices citizens can afford, boosting trust in pharmaceutical services and ensuring access to essential treatment for all Syrians.
Challenges facing Syria’s health sector
According to the strategy, Syria’s health system faces structural challenges. Many facilities remain damaged or not fully equipped, and only a small share operate at full capacity. The health workforce is heavily depleted and unevenly distributed, with continued shortages of doctors, nurses, midwives, and specialists. Low salaries, limited career advancement, and weak training and accreditation systems undermine retention and the ability to close staffing gaps.
Out of pocket spending dominates health financing, representing about half of total expenditure, which places households under financial pressure. Public investment remains among the lowest in the region, leaving Syria behind most neighboring countries and widening disparities in access.
Pharmaceutical production has partially recovered but covers only part of the essential medicines list. Weak regulation, lack of standardization, and fragile supply chains lead to recurrent shortages of antibiotics, insulin, cancer medicines, and anesthesia drugs.
Most facilities still rely on paper reporting, while non governmental organizations run parallel systems. Electronic medical records are introduced inconsistently, without national standards or interoperability. Institutional capacity for planning, monitoring, and evaluation across all levels of the health sector remains limited.
Ongoing economic difficulties and international sanctions constrain funding options and make it difficult to access the full range of technical partnerships and investments that could accelerate progress.
Beyond these technical barriers, the sector also faces governance challenges. Inefficiency and entrenched interests have distorted resource allocation, complicated procurement and human resources management, weakened oversight, blurred accountability lines, and encouraged behaviors that do not support reform. Addressing these issues requires persistence, stronger oversight, and the sustained expansion of accountability and transparency mechanisms to build public trust and shift incentives toward performance and integrity.
Syrian Health Ministry launches national strategic plan Enab Baladi.
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