The Government approved the long awaited and debated National Health Strategy 2008/13 at the weekly Cabinet meeting on October 2 2008, the Government press office said in a statement.

The strategy includes improving hospitals by introducing new management methods, such as making managers' contracts dependent on the results of their work. Another part of the strategy is to improve emergency units.

Other planned reforms are to change the way hospitals are funded by allowing private companies to offer health insurance and implementing e-government in the health care sector.

E-health cards should be introduced for every patient by 2013, the strategy says. By 2009 patients should have online health records.

To make all of this a reality it is envisaged that more funding will be allocated from the budget. The document did not give a figure despite recent calls of by Health Minister Evgenii Zhelev that five per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) should be allocated to health care.

Currently Bulgaria allocates 4.2 per cent of its GDP for health care.

As for letting private organisations operate in the sector, the strategy did not name an exact time frame. Lifting the monopoly of the State Health Insurance Fund has been a subject of harsh debate and confrontation in the ruling coalition.

The senior partner in the ruling coalition, the Bulgarian Socialist Party, is against letting private companies operate in the sector, while its two coalition partners the National Movement for Stability and Progress and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms support the idea of lifting the monopoly as of 2009.