The consequences of COVID-19 have so far led to the deaths of 111 doctors, pharmacists and dentists in Serbia, while the number of nurses, technicians and other healthcare employees who’ve lost their lives remains unknown. Such statistics are just one of the many symptoms of the fact that the pandemic was met without a plan and wasn’t responded to well.
When we found out last December that the epidemic that had appeared in China would spread to encompass the whole world, we were, unfortunately, good prognosticators. We announced, as a union, that it would expose all the shortcomings of the healthcare system. The consequences for public health are already great, and we are afraid that they’ll be even greater in the future. From the outset we didn’t have sufficient numbers of health workers, not even as many as are prescribed and required by the Law. Under such conditions, unfortunately, the Ministry didn’t respond to our first request to hire all doctors, nurses and technicians registered with the unemployment bureau.
We had a lack of protective equipment, which was initially very pronounced and subsequently grew to become chronic, while we were confronted by ignorance and a lack of information about what kind of tests are done for coronaviruses and whether they are conducted according to indications or some other criteria. Likewise, the workers who were hired at COVID units weren’t adequately transferred and no consideration was given to maintaining the capacity of the healthcare system.
In the midst of the pandemic, public consultations were organised on a new plan to optimise the network of healthcare institutions in the republic of Serbia which, in the opinion of the union of doctors and pharmacists, would be disastrous for the healthcare sector.
We should add to this poor organisation, the fact that acting directors of health institutions thought more about keeping their position during the epidemic than they thought about organising healthcare, which was particularly aggravated during the epidemic, then they thought more about the forming of illegitimate bodies, such as the crisis headquarters, instead of the Republic Expert Commission and respecting the authority of the Batut Institute for public health, as well as the failure of Health Minister Zlatibor Lončar to take all necessary steps. All of this led to us ending up with the pandemic having major consequences, to the false reducing of figures for both those who have succumbed and those who are newly infected, although we are probably among the worst in the world.
When it comes to the deaths of health workers, The consequences of COVID-19 have so far led to the deaths of 111 doctors, pharmacists and dentists in Serbia, while the number of nurses, technicians and other healthcare employees who’ve lost their lives remains unknown. Our fear is that the announced optimisation of healthcare, the public debate on which has been faked more than conducted during the epidemic, will lead to us not only suffering from the consequences of the epidemic, but suffering even more from bad reform. We consider the proposal to privatise public healthcare as disastrous for the inhabitants of Serbia. We have submitted our proposals and will continue to do so. The Ministry, unfortunately, doesn’t respect us, despite us having 6,700 members among the 19,500 doctors who are employed in the state healthcare system. We consider ourselves an obligatory negotiator, as the holders of jobs in a domain of general social importance, and we are seeking urgent insight into the numbers and the database of the deceased and new patients. We also consider that the public debate on health optimisation should be extended and the current proposal should be abandoned, as it is harmful.
