Ales Byalyatski: “Minsk hospitals resemble military hospitals”

The human right activist is in a pulmonology department of Minsk hospital #3 with a diagnosis “bilateral pneumonia”.

“I have been at hospital for the third week,” Ales Byalyatski tells Radio Svaboda. “The hospital is evidently overcrowded. A gastroenterology department was closed, all suffering from pneumonia have been taken to an additional hospital department, because there’s not enough places. People lie on beds, side chairs in the pulmonology department – there’s no place for them. It looks like a military hospital. The conditions here fail to meet any standards.

We can’t complain at the lack of medicines. But we can’t say where they were produced, medical workers mix antibiotics themselves. They also change treatment courses, but I think it’s normal...”

Swine flu is raging all over the world, including all Belarus’s neighbour countries. But the Belarusian officials say “people do not die from swine flu in Belarus”. However, information about more deaths from influenza and its complications is being spread in Belarus unofficially. Representatives of the Health Care Ministry refuse to confirm or deny this information.