last update: August 2014
There are three types of medical health protection in Croatia:
1. There is the urgent medical health care, which covers only the most urgent cases and is available to all people present on the Croatian territory.
2. There is the basic health care insurance ( osnovno zdravstveno osiguranje ), which is linked to having a status in Croatia: for example being employed, being registered as unemployed, being a dependent family member. Almost everyone in Croatia has this type of health care, but is a type of health-care that you need to regularise it and does not come “automatically”. This type of health-care gives you the right to see a doctor or a specialist you are referred to by your doctor, but you still need to cover a certain percentage of the cost of your medical visit and treatment.
3. Then there is the additional health-care insurance ( dopunsko zdravstveno osiguranje ), which allows you to access more health-care provisions and pay an even smaller percentage of the medical visit or treatment by yourself.
Migrants in detention and asylum seekers only have the access to urgent medical assistance – unless they also have an additional status, which entitles them to the basic health insurance. For example, asylum seekers have the right to work after a year of staying in Croatia and not having received their response to their asylum claim – and if they are employed or if they register as unemployed, they have the right to basic health insurance. However, there is no documented practice regarding this, because no asylum seekers has been employed yet, or registered as unemployed.
Besides the urgent medical assistance, there is a presence of medical staff (either just a nurse, or a nurse and a doctor) in both the detention center in Ježevo, as well as in the open reception center for asylum seekers in Porin. The medical staff is present every week for a few hours.
Persons under refugee or subsidiary protection have the right to health care in the same way as Croatian citizens. This means that they need to regularise their status as employed, unemployed, a family dependent or otherwise and then have the right to basic health-care and in addition they need to provide their own additional health-care.