Health Care Minister Zlatibor Loncar said on Wednesday that nurses and doctors across Serbia will get pay raises, adding that the pay raise will bring back medical professionals who left the country.

He said that nurses will get a pay raise of 15 percent while doctors will have their salaries raised by 10 percent.  

“I know that many nurses and doctorsleft Serbia for higher pay but many have returned and more will return now that a nurse’s salary will be 50,000 Dinars (1 Euro – 118 Dinars),” the minister said during a visit to a hospital in the southern town of Prokuplje.  

Loncar said that Serbia is earmarking huge funds, in billions of Euros, to improve health care in Serbia. According to the minister, “this much money has not been invested in health care in Serbia” which has been used to build what he said are state of the art clinical centers in Nis, Kragujevac and Novi Sad and to train doctors to treat rare diseases and secure medication.