Sašo Klekovski Is the New Health Minister: Straight From the Fund to the Top of the Ministry

The Ministry of Health has a new man at the top. As part of the reshuffle of the government, parliament elected Sašo Klekovski as the new health minister, on the proposal of VMRO-DPMNE, and today the handover of the office from outgoing minister Azir Aliu was officially carried out.

Klekovski is not an unknown name in the public sector. Until his election to the ministerial post, he was director of the Health Insurance Fund - which means he comes from the very heart of the system he will now run. He graduated from the Medical Faculty in Skopje and also completed an MBA program, giving him a mix of medical and managerial education - a combination that, at least on paper, sounds logical for the health portfolio.

His biography also reveals a broader engagement. From 2007 to 2010 he was the first co-chair of the Joint Consultative Committee of civil society between the EU and Macedonia, and he took part in drafting several national strategies, among them the first State Strategy for the Prevention and Repression of Corruption. In other words, a man who has long moved in the space between the state, the civil sector and reforms.

At the handover, the two ministers discussed ongoing projects and activities in the health sector, with a message about the uninterrupted continuation of the reforms already begun. But we hear the words about „continuity" at every changeover. The real test for Klekovski won't be in the biography or the first statements, but in whether a patient in a public hospital feels any difference - shorter waiting lists, more accessible medicines, less paying „out of pocket." The country's health system has been drowning in the same problems for decades. Every new minister arrives with promises; few leave with results.