EU INTEGRA improves emergency medical services for more than 80,000 residents of the Pirot District

The European Union, through the “EU Support for Integrated Territorial Development – EU INTEGRA” Programme, implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of European Integration, is providing nearly EUR 1.5 million to improve the emergency medical services system in the Pirot District. Thanks to this support, more than 80,000 citizens will benefit from more accessible, efficient and higher-quality healthcare services.

The implementation of the project “Health for All – Establishing a Joint Emergency Medical Service in the Urban Area of Pirot”, worth more than EUR 1.9 million, started with a kick-off meeting held in the Small Hall of the City Administration of Pirot. The remaining project funds are being provided by the partner local self-governments.

The project is implemented by the City of Pirot and the municipalities of Babušnica, Bela Palanka and Dimitrovgrad, with the support of the Regional Development Agency South. Its objective is to improve the accessibility and coordination of emergency medical services by establishing a joint emergency medical service system for the urban area of Pirot, which includes more than 212 settlements and over 80,000 residents.

Over the next 21 months, the project will include the construction of a new emergency medical service facility in Pirot, the reconstruction of the Health Centre in Babušnica, the upgrading of medical outpatient facilities in the municipalities of Bela Palanka and Dimitrovgrad, as well as the procurement of modern medical equipment.

The Mayor of Pirot, Vladan Vasić, expressed his gratitude to the partners for their support and highlighted the importance of the project for improving healthcare services throughout the district.

“For us, it is extremely important to have a new emergency medical service building. It represents a much better, larger and more humane way of addressing healthcare needs, ensuring faster response times and significantly better working conditions for our healthcare professionals. We certainly would not have been able to achieve this so quickly and efficiently without the support of the European Union,” Vasić stressed.

The territorial significance of the project and the distribution of investments were presented by the Deputy Mayor of Pirot, Miloš Colić. He pointed out that investments had been planned in line with the territorial strategy for the urban area of Pirot to ensure an equitable distribution of resources and respond to the needs of residents across the entire area.

“The project envisages the reconstruction of the Health Centre in Babušnica, as well as equipping it with modern medical devices. In addition, medical outposts and outpatient facilities in Donja Koritnica and Moklište will be upgraded, while the emergency medical service facility in Željuša, Dimitrovgrad, is also planned for reconstruction,” Colić specified.

The Secretary General of the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities, Nikola Tarbuk, congratulated Pirot and its partner municipalities on securing the project and emphasised that inter-municipal cooperation is a key success factor. He assessed that the project demonstrates how local governments, by working together, can develop sustainable solutions to challenges that go beyond the administrative boundaries of individual municipalities and cities.

“For us as an organisation, it is particularly important that this project addresses such a significant issue and that, through this model of cooperation, the municipalities of this region are not only solving the problems of their citizens, but are also developing a model that could be applied in other parts of the country in the future. I am confident that over the next two years we will significantly improve the local emergency medical service system,” Tarbuk stated.

The meeting was attended by Vladan Vasić, Mayor of Pirot; Valentina Vidović, Head of the Department for the Management of EU Structural and Cohesion Funds at the Ministry of European Integration; Nikola Tarbuk, Secretary General of the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities; representatives of the Regional Development Agency South; and operational teams from SCTM, the City of Pirot and the partner municipalities of Babušnica, Bela Palanka and Dimitrovgrad.

During the meeting, participants discussed the activity plan, coordination mechanisms and the next steps in project implementation.

The “EU Support for Integrated Territorial Development – EU INTEGRA” Programme is funded by the European Union with EUR 15 million and implemented by the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities and UNOPS, in cooperation with the Ministry of European Integration. The Programme supports local self-governments in planning and implementing integrated territorial development in line with the principles of the European Union’s Cohesion Policy.

Through the grant scheme implemented by SCTM, the Programme has so far supported five integrated projects involving 14 local self-governments and 28 development interventions, with a total value of EUR 6.8 million, of which the European Union provides EUR 4.5 million.