On Thursday, 23 July, Oleg Belbas, director of the Ungheni Health Centre, presented an activity report for the first half of 2026 in the Ungheni district council hall. In administrative language, the document lists the “priority directions of action” of the district’s primary healthcare. Read another way, it is something far more useful for an ordinary person: a list of prevention services you can request for free, right now, from your own family doctor — and which many of us do not request, because we do not know they are our due.
This article does not retell the meeting. It takes each of the five directions stated and explains what it means in practice, who is entitled, what is free and how to reach the service. And at the end it shows why, in a district like Ungheni — ageing, mostly rural, where seven in ten people die of heart disease and cancer — these services matter more than the dry tone of a report suggests.
The “entry gate”: what family medicine really is
Before the services, one thing that is easily forgotten: in the Moldovan system, the family doctor is not a formality but the first, mandatory door to everything else. This is who refers you to a specialist, to tests, to hospital, who prescribes your compensated medicines and opens your path to any prevention programme. The National Health Insurance Company (CNAM) puts it plainly: primary healthcare is “the first level of the health system to which a person turns as a mandatory step”.
Two things are essential to know, because they change behaviour:
- You can choose a family doctor whether or not you are insured. The basic services of primary care — including preventive examinations, vaccines and care for pregnant women and children — are provided to everyone. The only practical condition is to be registered on a family doctor’s list at the institution serving where you live.
- The system is publicly funded, per visit. In 2025, Moldova’s primary care ran over 3.4 billion lei from the mandatory insurance fund, through 282 providers, for over 9 million visits to the family doctor. The cost of a consultation — on average about 360 lei — is not paid by the patient, but by the fund.
In the Ungheni district, this network is going through a change we have documented at length: through the reorganization approved by the district council on 18 June, the number of health centres dropped from 11 to 6. The “autonomous” centres — those with legal and financial independence, founded by the district council, a model introduced in Moldova in 2007 — were kept where they exceeded the national threshold of 6,000 people on lists. The villages of Mănoilești, Valea Mare, Cetireni, Rădenii Vechi and Petrești lost their own institution, but remain served through family-doctor offices and doctors who travel on a schedule.
A detail worth remembering, because it explains a lot: the family-doctor lists in the district hold 97,296 people, far above the population that actually lives here — about 74,507 people, according to preliminary data for 2025. The difference is made up of those who have left but remain registered. Funding and thresholds are calculated on the lists, not on the real population — hence the permanent pressure on the system.
The five services, one by one
1. Early detection of cancer
The first direction of the report covers four sites — colorectal, cervical, breast and skin — but they are not organized in the same way, and here a confusion can do harm. Here is the real situation in Moldova, not in other countries:
Cervical cancer. The Babeș-Papanicolau test (Pap smear) is free for women aged 25–61, once every three years, directly at the family doctor. It is the simplest of all to request: you need no referral, only an appointment. Prevention starts even earlier, through vaccination against HPV (see below).
Breast cancer. Here Ungheni has an advantage that few districts have: the Ungheni Health Centre hosts a regional centre for early detection, serving women from four districts — Ungheni, Nisporeni, Călărași and Fălești — with free services covered from public money. The path, as we explained in detail in a dedicated article, starts with the family doctor (with the F027/e referral form) or by going directly to the centre: a clinical exam, then an ultrasound for those under 40 and a digital mammogram after 40. In 2025 alone, over 12,500 women passed through the national network of such centres, and in about 90 a cancer was confirmed.
Colorectal cancer. Ungheni is also among the pilot districts for a new programme: a simple test to detect occult blood in the stool, which you receive from the family doctor and do at home, with no diet or preparation. If the result is positive, a free colonoscopy follows in a designated institution. For now, the programme targets a narrow age band — people aged 50–55 without symptoms. (Beware of information online: in other countries the ages are different; in Moldova, this is the rule.)
Skin cancer. Here the report lists an intention, not a ready-made service: in Moldova there is not yet an organized skin-screening programme. Examination of the skin is part of the annual preventive medical check-up at the family doctor, and a dedicated programme is only being considered for the coming years. In practice: if you have a mole that has changed, the family doctor sees it at the annual check-up and refers you onward, to a dermatologist.
2. Vaccines (the National Immunization Plan)
All vaccines in the National Calendar are mandatory, guaranteed by the state and free. The family doctor keeps track and calls children in on schedule; systematic vaccination is the condition for admission to collective settings. The vaccine against HPV — the one that prevents cervical cancer — is offered free to adolescents aged 9–14.
Here the report actually touches on one of the most serious problems in Moldovan health. Vaccination coverage has fallen below the 95% safety threshold recommended by the World Health Organization. Among one-year-old children, in 2024, national coverage was 87% for DTP (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis) and only 83.9% for the MMR vaccine (measles-mumps-rubella). The consequence was seen immediately: whereas in 2023 Moldova had 3 cases of measles, in 2024 there were 216 — most of them in completely unvaccinated children. “Strict adherence to the National Immunization Plan”, as the report puts it, is not a bureaucratic phrase but exactly what keeps at bay a disease that had returned.
3. Monitoring of pregnant women and children
For an expectant mother, the system provides a standardized and free path: on confirmation of pregnancy, the family doctor registers her (ideally, by 12 weeks) and gives her the Perinatal Medical Booklet. There follow at least nine antenatal visits at fixed intervals, with a whole package of tests and ultrasounds covered by the mandatory insurance, plus the maternity-leave certificate, issued at 30 weeks.
For the newborn, the family doctor’s team makes a home visit after discharge from the maternity ward, then periodic check-ups in the first year — to monitor growth, feeding and to set the vaccination schedule. All of this is free, including for uninsured children.
4. Preventive check-ups and noncommunicable diseases
This is perhaps the direction with the greatest quiet impact. Every adult over 18 is entitled to a free annual preventive medical examination at the family doctor — measuring blood pressure, weight, waist circumference, examination of the skin, thyroid and breasts; after 40, once every two years, checks of cholesterol and eye pressure are added. The only condition remains the same: to be registered with a family doctor.
Why does it matter? Because about 89% of deaths in the Republic of Moldova are caused by noncommunicable diseases — cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory — and roughly 80% of them are preventable. An annual check-up that catches high blood pressure or high blood sugar in time is, at the scale of a district, more valuable than any later emergency treatment.
5. Screening of at-risk groups for tuberculosis
Tuberculosis remains a real problem in Moldova, one of the countries with a high burden of drug-resistant TB. Under the new national programme for 2026–2030, treatment is free and guaranteed, and detection is done through symptom checks, X-rays and rapid tests. Incidence fell to about 54 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 2024, but the disease strikes in a concentrated way: in vulnerable groups — contacts of patients, people living with HIV, the homeless, prisoners, drug users — the risk is several times higher than the average. This is precisely why “screening of at-risk groups” is a separate direction: that is where the disease is caught before it spreads. Some of these services — HIV tests, counselling, tuberculosis screening — are already offered in Ungheni and funded from CNAM’s prevention fund.
Why all this matters precisely in Ungheni
A prevention report does not read the same in every district. Ungheni has a profile that makes family medicine the first line of defence, not an option.
It is an ageing and mostly rural district: of the roughly 74,500 inhabitants, 63% live in villages, and nearly one in four — 24.5% — is over 60. Fewer and fewer children are born and more and more people die: in 2025 there were nearly 280 more deaths than births. And the structure of these deaths says everything about where the effort must go: diseases of the circulatory system cause 55.5% of deaths, tumours 17.4% — together, over seven in ten. These are exactly the diseases that preventive check-ups, screening and the monitoring of chronic patients can delay or prevent.
Added to this pressure is a systemic one. The density of doctors in the district is below the national average, and the corps of family doctors is ageing: nationally there are 1,589 family doctors, nearly 400 of them over 65, and the system would need another 259. Even the reform of the health centres — merging the 11 into 6 — was designed, the authorities say, to concentrate resources. The director of the Ungheni Health Centre views it with reservations:
A specialist who is both a doctor and an administrator does not bring quality. Oleg Belbas, director of the Ungheni Health Centre, in an interview for Europa Liberă
Belbas adds that the reform “will not solve the shortage of family doctors” — the system’s underlying problem.
This is the real stake of the list presented on 23 July. Prevention at the family doctor is cheap and close to home; treating a disease that has advanced far is expensive and, often, hundreds of kilometres away — all of Moldova’s oncological radiotherapy, for instance, is done in a single place, in Chișinău, about 105 km from Ungheni. The earlier it is caught, the shorter and cheaper the road. A free test at the family doctor, today, can mean a journey avoided, tomorrow.
In practice: how to request each service
- The first step, always: check which family doctor you are registered with (or register). You can do so even if you are uninsured.
- Pap smear (cervical): direct appointment with the family doctor, women aged 25–61.
- Breast cancer detection: referral from the family doctor or going directly to the Ungheni Health Centre, 27 Romană Street.
- Colorectal test: ask your family doctor for it if you are 50–55; you do it at home.
- Vaccines: the family doctor calls children in on schedule; for adults, ask about the tetanus booster and HPV.
- Annual preventive check-up: request it from your family doctor — it is the right of every adult, once a year.
- Suspected tuberculosis (a cough lasting more than 2–3 weeks, persistent mild fever, night sweats, weight loss): go to the family doctor for an X-ray and tests; treatment is free.
This article explains the services based on public information from CNAM, on Ministry of Health Order no. 96/2026 (breast cancer), on the national cervical cancer screening programme, on the Ministry of Health’s Report on immunization in 2024, on ANSP data on noncommunicable diseases, on the national tuberculosis programme 2026–2030 and on data from the National Bureau of Statistics. The figures on tuberculosis, cancer and vaccination coverage are national — data broken down for the Ungheni district are not published. The concrete figures from the report presented on 23 July — how many Ungheni residents were tested, vaccinated or registered in the first half of 2026 — were not made public, only summarized in the directions above.