Medical assistance to the population of Western Belarus in the context of the development of healthcare in the interwar Poland (1919–1939)

Abstract

The article analyzes the formation of the health care system in the territory of Western Belarus during the interwar period. On the basis of a wide range of sources, the general trends in the development of medicine in the Polish state in the interwar period, as well as the characteristics that determined the aberrations in the construction of the healthcare structure in the Belarusian territory were identified. It was found that the negative humanitarian consequences of the First World War and the Polish-Soviet war, combined with the economic and economic difficulties of the post-war period, caused a chronic health crisis in Western Belarus throughout the interwar period. After the liquidation of the Polish Ministry of Health in 1923, the centralized management of the healthcare system was replaced by a decentralized model, with the allocation of the state, municipal, insurance and private sectors of medicine. The decentralized model of healthcare worked well in the proper Polish lands, but was not suitable for the conditions of Western Belarus, where the lack of medical personnel, health institutions and their concentration mainly in large cities in conditions of significant geographical remoteness of settlements with a predominance of rural areas, combined with the weak development of transport communications, predetermined a low degree of provision of medical care for most population. As a result, the healthcare of Western Belarus lagged significantly behind the general Polish level in development, and additional opportunities to expand medical care to the civilian population were drawn from the resources of charity, public associations and military medicine.