58% of Bulgarian cities, towns, and villages will have access to emergency medical services within 20 minutes by 2020, according to a draft healthcare reform plan of the Health Ministry.

The document was presented Tuesday by Health Minister Petar Moskov at a debate on urgent healthcare sector reform organized by investor.bg.

According to the reform plan, 27% of settlements in Bulgaria will have access to emergency medical services in 20-30 minutes, while 15% of settlements will have access to emergency care in over 30 minutes, meaning that 7 million Bulgarians will be able to reach emergency care in no more than 30 minutes by 2020.

According to the document, there will be 28 emergency care centers with 198 branches in the country, of which 170 will be located outside regional centers.

A total of 34 emergency care units of hospitals in district cities will provide urgent diagnosis, treatment and ambulatory monitoring for up to 24 hours.

No more than 3 million Bulgarians currently have access to adequate emergency care and diagnostic services within 30 minutes, with half of them living in Sofia, according to reports of investor.bg.

Two days ago Petar Moskov announced that the European Commission had approved financing of EUR 85 M for Bulgaria for development of emergency care services.

He assured that the EU funding would be spent in line with the concept paper on developing emergency care adopted at the end of 2014.

Moskov vowed that Bulgaria would buy a total of 600 new ambulances, with 400 of them to be bought with EU money and 200 with funding from the state budget.

Bulgaria’s Health Minister, as cited by dnevnik.bg, said Tuesday that the reform plan was to be on the agenda of the government sitting on Wednesday.