High prices, low wages and broken roads – all these problems of occupied Crimea seem small in importance as compared to the medical care. Crimeans couldn’t imagine these terrible things even in a nightmare: free Russian medical care was practically inaccessible to them.
Medical facilities without medical workers
The mass exodus of staff from polyclinics and hospitals of Crimea takes place for a second consecutive year. Last June, it was announced that more than 700 positions for medical workers are vacant on the peninsula. For example, there are a little more than half of the physicians working in the Alushta city hospital. At the same time, the majority of 174 working specialists is pensioners. There is no neurosurgeon in the neurosurgical department of the Kerch hospital for six months. There is a lack of obstetrician-gynecologists in Crimea: medical facilities are staffed by an average of 70-80%. The situation with oncologists is even more complicated: there are not more than 30% of them in the regions of the occupied peninsula along with a 70% deficit of medical equipment in cancer detection centers.
But if Crimea lacked 700 doctors last year, then in 2016, the deficit of doctors and nurses amounts to 600 and 1100 positions correspondingly just in Sevastopol. At the same time, according to a sad tradition, 1100 medical workers are pensioners and another 500 – persons nearing retirement age.
The main reason of leaving doctors’ jobs is a low wage and intolerable working conditions.
“People have different reasons to leave their jobs, but above all it is an excessive work load for a totally inadequate wage. In order to provide the round-the-clock anaesthesiology and intensive care service, employees are forced to work at 1.5-2 wage rates and regularly stay up late at night in operating rooms that isn’t additionally paid,” doctors of the Sevastopol city hospital wrote in the petition when 7 anesthesiologists-resuscitators resigned from the medical facility in a few months.
There is the same picture in the Kerch children’s hospital, where doctors also leave their jobs in droves, because their wages are constantly reduced by lowering or not paying incentive payments.
“In May, nurses and others receive 10% (10% of incentive payments – editor’s note). The care-taking personnel – 40%. And medical workers didn’t receive a penny of incentive payments in May,” the head of the hospital’s trade union committee Elena Ivaschenko said. However, Kerch doctors were prohibited to communicate with journalists without the approval of the Crimean ‘Ministry of Health’ after her revelations.
As a result, doctors will have to work day and night to reach the salary of 36-39 thousand rubles that was declared by officials. By the way, the same is true for nurses as well: according to reports, the average salary of the nursing staff is 23-24 thousand rubles ($400).
However, it is not clear why medical workers leave their jobs in health facilities in droves while having such large wages and it is simply impossible to replace them – offices of specialist have been empty for several months.
“The best ones resign. When we say a doctor that you can’t do in this way, she said: I have signed and will sign their requests. You all can leave your jobs. Nobody holds you,” medical workers of the Kerch hospital say. And this is far from being an isolated case – nobody is going to hold doctors in positions.
In the queue for health
Crimean queues have become a topic for jokes. However, in the case of health, it is a wrong time to joke – sometimes delay may cause disability or even death. However, there are not many things depending on the patients in Crimea – even if you came in the polyclinic at 5 am, it doesn’t mean that you can get to the doctor soon, because appointment with doctors are made up to a couple of weeks in advance. And it is if you are lucky. For example, if you wish to make an appointment with a physician or other specialist in the Sevastopol polyclinic #2, you need to spend at least a month. By the way, you can’t make an appointment with an endocrinologist – he resigned two months ago.
“I needed to arrange a visit to an eye doctor, but I can’t make an appointment. There is a queue once a month. Can you imagine that???” an elderly woman from Sevastopol is outraged. It is impossible to make an appointment either by phone or online.
A healthy man can’t stay in such a queue and what to say about a sick mad? And what about parents with sick children? And what if you need a doctor’s certificate to send your child to a kindergarten or school or for an ordinary medical examination? Can you imagine how much time a mother will spend to visit all specialists to obtain this document? So, now the police is called in medical institutions to calm down parents exhausted with round-the-clock duties near doctor’s offices.
“If you need to visit a specialized doctor, you have to reserve a place in a queue early in the morning, wait until the registry opens, fill in appointment confirmations and then reserve a place in a queue to this doctor. You can stay in this endless queue until the reception hours are over and still don’t get a medical examination. And then you have to repeat all over again by doing that day after day,” the parents staying in one of such Crimean queues say.
And we can’t blame the doctors in this situation: the work load on them was excessively increased and continues to increase due to their colleagues left the hospital. According to the following statistics, a neurologist at the children’s clinic consults 70-80 people during his reception hours. How do you think, what the quality of this mass consultation will be?…
Those who are seeking an appointment at emergency stations of Crimean hospitals will face with the same difficulties: they will have to stay in a queue from 4 to 6 hours even with a minimum number of people.
“We have been staying in the queue while having a trauma for 4 hours (despite the fact that there were 7 people before us) to get an appointment card for X-ray photography. Then we had 1.5 hours of waiting for X-ray results. Our nerves snapped there after 5.5 hours of waiting and we left having taken the results,” one of the patients of the emergency station of the GBUZ “Simferopol clinical emergency hospital #6” (or better to say the 6th city hospital) said.
Crimean hospitals: without equipment and repair
When Russia came, the medical equipment started to experience amazing metamorphosis: one day it is out of service, another day it is discarded forcing Crimeans to go to private clinics and spend large sums of money for services they should receive free of charge in accordance with the Russian insurance medicine. For example, an ordinary ECG will cost 350 rubles in such a medical center, ultrasonic scanning – from 600 to 2,000 rubles, CT scanning – from 3,500 to 18,000 rubles, X-ray – from 800 to 2,000 rubles.
At the same time, polyclinics and hospitals are still without any repair, they stopped to dream of new medical equipment, it would be great to receive at least coats and doctor’s overalls to not buy them for own money.
“When we came to Russia – we ask, we are at the level of beggars. We didn’t have any repair works for two years. There were neither whitewashing nor painting works, we make everything we can by using our own resources,” a nurse of the Kerch children’s hospital said. According to her, back in 2014, 28 medical overalls and 24 coats were given for 280 people.
Due to the Russian optimization of the health sector, entire departments were closed in Crimea: the bone-purulent infection department of the GBUZ “Simferopol clinical emergency hospital #6”, which was the only one in Crimea, the ENT department in the Lugovskaya hospital that served the residents of two districts – Simferopol and Bakhchisaray. Hospitals in villages and settlements are also closed by being merged with other medical institutions. At the same time, along with this medical disorder, a modern operating room with the ‘latest equipment’ is opened in the Sevastopol city hospital #5 (“Maternal and Child Health Care Centre”) in front of many cameras.
The Sevastopol ‘Governor’ Sergey Menyaylo attended the opening ceremony of the operating room
However, it appears in practice that most of this equipment was purchased even in Ukraine and now it is in the asset list of other hospitals, from where it, actually, was transferred for the next fraud for one day.
“They took everything that could… Something from the first city hospital, something – from the maternity hospital. The air cleaner didn’t work at all, we don’t know where they took it from, but then it was immediately taken away. Oxygen tubes – from the maternity hospital… Then everything was taken away. And the operating room was closed,” a worker of the medical facility where the operating unit with the equipment bought for the Ukrainian money was officially opened said.
At the same time, the vast majority of hospitals of the occupied peninsula are in a deplorable state. “We were taken in an isolation ward, where windows were almost impossible to open, there was 30 degrees Celsius above zero in the ward. It is impossible to stay there in the afternoon when the sun is shining. The child has a fever, but it is stuffy and unbearably hot in the ward. We asked to be at least taken into the corridor,” a mother of a sick child said.
Ways of solution
They try to solve the health problems in Crimea by different ways. For example, all chief doctors now have new representatives – for anti-terrorist activities with a salary, which is clearly not 10 thousand rubles.
As for the increasing the salaries for doctors, in this case the administration of medical facilities advices to go to the trick and take patients on hospital beds for a longer time to get a larger sum of money.
“Do more of completed cases, do interterritorial cases. Take patients for a longer time and persuade them to stay not for a half of their cases but for a full completed case. If a patient should stay for 7 days according his diagnosis, but he stays for 5 days, you will receive 50% instead of 100% for this child. Our money goes for this,” the chief doctor of the Kerch hospital advised to the staff.
They have a short way with doctors in Sevastopol: you can go wherever you like – we will invite the paramedics from Russia instead of you. And, indeed, the city budget provides for 70 million for covering relocation costs for medical workers from Russia.
In addition, doctors were promised to build a house with 54 apartments for medical workers and increase the student ratio in the medical college by three times to train skilled workers. However, there are no visible changes now: there are no doctors, but the queues are increasing.
People in Crimea wanted the social justice of the Soviet times, but they didn’t consider that the Russian national anthem put to a melody of the Soviet one didn’t mean that would automatically return to the same system of distribution of social benefits.
Free medicine turned to be invisible – of course, it exists, but it is extremely difficult to take advantage of its services. Therefore, those ones who have the necessary finances go to private clinics and receive the necessary medical services. Those who have no money stay in queues for months hoping to get an appointment with a doctor. And it is good if their wait will finally be over, but, in fact, this time may not come. And the mortality rate is increasing on the occupied peninsula.
