Staff genocide in the Health department

Erol Rizaov

A startling figure, announced by Health Minister Venko Filipce, tells the tragic consequences of human-organized genocide committed in public health. In an interview with Focus, the minister says that in just eight years, since 2010, more than 2,000 doctors have gone to private clinics and abroad.

Those of you that have never heard this figure before, stop, have some water and sugar, because what’s coming up is hard to bear if you are not in good health, because this is a tragic story of how this sick society was created, even though the citizens of Macedonia have paid billions of euros in the past years for a better public health. Instead of decent health protection, their money was used to create an impossible system of staff exodus, a classic exile of good doctors abroad and to private healthcare facilities, in which only those who can take out a bank loan can be decently treated. The rich people have been treated abroad for a long time. Well-known clinics in Istanbul, Sofia, Vienna, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Paris, London, Berlin, Frankfurt… there are doctors and patients from Macedonia even across the ocean, where they receive appropriate treatment according to world standards and prices. Doctors there are paid a month as much as they would be paid here for the entire year, while patients get the best care available.
In this country, reigns an ambience of healthcare lottery, something like a Russian roulette. Those who are lucky enough to get medical treatment in private clinics will continue to pay debts to banks and the state health insurance fund. If they are not lucky and if they die, they will leave a heavy burden that the family will inherit. Only the sufferers know how difficult and painful these family dramas are.

What happened to Macedonia in this most sensitive activity that needs to take care of the health of the citizens and the state? The minister says that not only a huge number of doctors went to private hospitals and abroad, but many top professors retired early, because the state had no strategy to keep them. As soon as there are no known professors from the state clinics, and because of some incomprehensible vengeance, those who went to private clinics do not engage in the profession, the Faculty of Medicine in Skopje depletes without quality pedagogical and teaching staff. Therefore, lately, severe mistakes were made by under-educated doctors. Has anyone in the state calculated how much it costs to “make” a good doctor or a professor at the medical faculty? The answer is – no one. Because it cannot be calculated. There is no price, as there is no cost for health. Therefore, the consequences are very visible and tragic.

For the conspirators that everything has its price because we live in such a time, let’s solve the equation with three known and unknown. So, calculated in proportion to the cost of six years of studies at the Faculty of Medicine in Skopje, how much does it cost the student, and how much the state, how much does the specialization after completing the studies cost, the cost of the permanent scientific and practical upgrading of doctors, is a figure of about 150,000 Euros, paid by the state and doctors. And this is where the numbers of the three known quantities in the equation end.

What we do with an unknown magnitude. How much does it cost a well-trained good doctor to leave public health because his personality, expertise and knowledge are being humiliated and because of the humiliating salary or pension. Finally, the damage to a wider plan that such a doctor ceases to cure patients who have already paid, pay, and will pay for that service for years and decades. Well, this cannot be calculated, because the consequences of creating a sick nation this way are incalculable, because all the work with the citizens’ health care policy is incalculable, or rather insane.

How else can it be explained, when famous and top doctors and professors are sent to early retirement, while they are still fully capable to work. It is quite normal for them to go to private clinics alongside hundreds of their patients. Has anyone heard of a retired top doctor or professor, who still want to work? Is there such an example anywhere in the world? Those people in the clinics and faculties are considered as icons. The respect for them is almost like respecting a living monument.

Which clinic in the world has basements full of expensive equipment that costs millions and was paid by citizens, sitting there unopened, left there to rust and go to waste, until someone finally unpacks it and learns how to use it? Can anyone calculate the dimensions of this crime? In which country does a top doctor, or a specialist, or a surgeon in public health gets a lower salary than a butcher in a slaughterhouse.