Lukashenko wants improvements in medical care
Lukashenko insists medicine be made accessible to all
Minsk, 02.04.2024
Source: sputnik.by
Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko visited the Grodno region to mark the start of construction of a municipal hospital.
Upon arriving in Grodno, Lukashenko was briefed by the Minister of Health, Alexander Khojaev, the presidential press service reports.
“We need to return medicine to the people once more. That is to say, we must make it equally accessible to everyone,” Lukashenko said.
Lukashenko also asked the head of the Ministry of Health for his views on personnel in his own department and on how best to implement human resources policies.
According to the Minister, the near future will see suitable candidates presented to the president for consideration.
“If you refuse to go with the flow and instead take a hard line like [former Minister for Health] Vladimir Karanik then the healthcare sector will function. In Belarus standards vary across the sector and in many camps the preference appears to be to go with the flow in order to serve superiors. Order must be established,” said the Belarusian leader.
Lukashenko expressed confidence that Belarus has enough doctors and nurses. The problem, he claimed, lies in the fact that some of them wish to be paid the same as Western medics whilst retaining the working conditions of the Belarussian healthcare sector.
He continued: “They really do work night and day, especially the youth. I’m sure of that. But they earn good money, too.”
He later recalled that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Belarusian doctors received a supplement to their salary. Now doctors must support themselves in a more active fashion.
“Medicine is a fine profession, a fine field – probably the best in the world. Of course, there’s a responsibility there and a need to move. You have to be prepared to be transferred and to work properly,” Lukashenko suggested.
Chairman of the Grodno Regional Executive Committee and former Minister for Health during the pandemic Vladimir Karanik recalled how Lukashenko provided assistance to doctors.
“Few will remember now, but I recall very well that it was doctors’ requests that prompted us to increase our proposed financial incentives by several times during the pandemic. We weren’t actually offering that much,” added Karanik.
Given its location in a nineteenth-century monastery, the existing municipal hospital cannot easily be adapted to meet modern needs; a new medical facility is therefore being built in the regional capital.
Having learned of plans to complete the construction of a new municipal hospital by 2027, the Belarussian president ordered work to be completed within two years.
According to the Ministry of Health, the new hospital will largely house therapeutic units and endovascular surgical theatres, as well as diagnostic units.
