Brussels - Health Minister Janez Poklukar said after Tuesday's meeting of the EU health ministers in Brussels that Slovenia could accept more than 50 Ukrainian patients. For now, Slovenia has offered to admit four sick people from Ukraine, including one child, he added.

Poklukar told Slovenian correspondents in Brussels that Ukrainian patients who were currently in the EU member states bordering Ukraine could be accommodated in the university medical centres in Ljubljana and Maribor and in the Celje hospital.

The Health Ministry later announced that capacities were also available at the Soča Rehabilitation Institute and the Oncology Institute in Ljubljana.

For now, Slovenia has offered to admit four patients, including one child, the minister said, adding that no decision had been made yet on whether they would actually come to Slovenia.

According to Poklukar, where Ukrainian patients will be transferred does not depend on professionals, but mainly on where these people have relatives and acquaintances, so that they continue on the way they are headed.

The minister said that Poland had asked for about 40 patients to be relocated, but it had turned out for at least the first 16 of them that they had not been relocated as they did not want to be too far from home.

Poklukar said that his counterparts from Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary said that the situation in their countries was under control. They ask for assistance for patients who need longer hospitalizations, who come from vulnerable groups.

They do not need assistance in the form of staff, either, although several countries, including Slovenia, have offered to send doctors.

Poklukar added that he had endorsed at today's meeting the proposal from Poland and several other EU member states to establish a special mechanism for financing the treatment of Ukrainian patients. Poland hosts almost 2,000 of them, he noted.