Croatia is likely to lose nearly 2,700 doctors over the next five years, or nearly 18 percent of their total number, due to the combined effects of retirements and emigration, the country's chamber of medicine said.

According to data compiled by the chamber of medicine, there is currently a total of 15,294 doctors working in Croatia’s health care system, including 14,094, or 92 percent, employed in public health care.

Around 15 percent of doctors, or 2,255, are expected to retire by 2025, and another 420 are likely to emigrate in the same period.

On the other hand, over the last five years an average of 488 new physicians joined the ranks of health care professionals every year. If this influx of new doctors continues at the same pace, there will be slightly over 2,400 newly employed physicians by 2025.

This is expected to result in a cumulative net loss of 275 doctors in 2025, reducing their overall number by 1.8 percent  from 2020.

A total of 874 doctors are registered as having left the country since it joined the European Union in mid-2013. After a spike in emigration in 2018, the number of doctors emigrating from the country has stabilised at about 125 a year.

However, the chamber of medicine said, a rising concern is an exponential increase in the number of newly-graduated medical professionals leaving the country.

They added that currently Croatia lacks 204 general practitioners, 75 paediatrists and 103 gynaecologists in the public health care system.