19 March 2024, Tuesday, 8:10
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"And You'll Be Treated..."

"And You'll Be Treated..."

This authority has recently become fast in inventing.

Belarus "abolish" district primary care physicians. They will be substituted by general practice doctors by 2020. The head of the Department for Personnel policy of Educational Institutions of the Ministry of Health Volha Marshalka stated that the other day.

What are the pitfalls of the "reform"? The former Minister of Labor Aliaksandr Sasnou answers questions of Charter97.org.

- From the point of view of a common man, I can say that it will be bad. A general practice doctor, the Ministry us talking about, is worse than a specialized doctor. If the number of such specialists is cut, we will experience it soon. Our free health care system misses comfort and service culture. Such "reforms" may stir up more problems.

From the social point of view such thoughts have a ground. All indications are that "free health care system" will be closed for Belarusians. It's not a secret that the most vulnerable segments of the population - pensioners, families with children and so on - are patients of district primary care physicians.

Free medicine in Belarus has been collapsing for a long time, and this process is multilevel. Let's start with the fact that people began to abandon its "benefits" and turn to the paid medical centers with high quality of services rendered.

On the other hand, the state is late with a good quality of social medicine which exists in the West. All the legacy of the medical service of the USSR degraded. At the same time, the authorities cauterize the USA, as if person with no money will not be treated... It's just ridiculous: in addition to a well-developed insurance system, one can actually get medical care even without insurance.

And we have a veiled paid medicine for all.

- What will happen to doctors in small settlements and villages? Will they be employed after the reform?

- Additional courses for a doctor is a complex and long process. It's not like to send an unemployed to clean a field from stones. It may take years and there is no guarantee that they will be employed in future.

The situation is as follows: one cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. The system will certainly be adapted, and regarding specific people... They should probably take care of their future on their own.

It concerns not only medicine. Do you remember orders to "employ" everyone by May 1 after all those Marchers of Angry Belarusians? Is it fulfilled?

All these social experiments come from communist utopias. Heads of our officials are filled with them. They cannot see clearly the situation both in the country and in the world. They only know one approach - sticks-based approach. There is no other method. And there will not.

- As of the beginning of December, Minsk missed around a thousand of nurses and doctors. How are the authorities going to carry out their reform amid such a situation?

- This problem touches upon not only the medical sphere. All spheres miss good specialists. The best and the most promising specialists have long left for the countries with good attitude.

Key places are usually occupied by either untalented people or those who due to age or other reasons have no place to go. And it will exist as long as such a system operates. It is, so to speak, a natural division into progressive and lagging parts of the world. And due to our "wise" leadership we can see ourselves in the second division.

- Now people discuss the construction of a new elite clinic for Lukashenka (it costs about €100 million). Do these two event have anything in common - abolition of district primary care physicians and the construction of expensive and paid hospitals?

- It's hard to say. We do not have full information on this matter, and here we can only guess.

But we have a rule in this country: as soon as the authorities come up with a large-scale and expensive projects, they look for those who will pay for them.

Are only these phenomena interrelated? The transfer to fee-based life occurs in all spheres in the country. Let's recall some experiments: payments at schools, growth of utility tariff rates, payments for social services for "spongers", payment for short-term arrests... Every step will cost some money soon. The country is being transferred to the "pay more" system".

This authority has recently become fast in inventing. And the result is a complete helplessness of the economy and the lack of money in the budget.

Here is a quotation: "I have a feeling the more educated the person is, the more often he starts inventing."

These words of Lukashenka. Perhaps, he meant himself. Only if in the first part it turned to be self-irony, then in the second, it was the stark realities of life which falls on our shoulders. That's how we survive with this "inventor".

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