Press release, photos, videos, 21.05.2016

Only political means will allow to overcome the present crisis in the health care, Emilia Slabunova, YABLOKO Chair, said in her speech for the delegates of the 10th (26th) Extraordinary Pirogov Congress of doctors. This can be achieved only through a legitimate and peaceful change of power in the elections.

Slabunova noted that the key problems of the sector were shortage of GP doctors on the primary level, as well as medical specialists, problems with rating of labour and “optimisation” of the network of health care institutions.

“[In our country] we have been observing a perverted optimization [of the sector], because optimisation means bringing the system to its optimum, its best state. The main indicator of such [optimum] is well-being of people. In our case optimisation leads to losses of well-being of all the subjects of the sector, ” she said.

Patients are losing access to and quality of health services, and health care workers demonstrate growing discontent due to the intensification of labour, the very system of medical services loses its function of health care, and for the society this means losses in human capital.

The present system of managing the sector is unable to solve these problems, Slabunova stressed. “If the government does not see it, it is an incompetent authority. But if the government sees it, and it is impossible not to see it, but does nothing, then it can be called a crime or criminal inaction,” she said.

To solve the problems of the sector we need to engage professional societies and political parties.

However, professional communities can not work normally and defend their interests in the present political system, which “demonstrates a complete crisis and dysfunction of all political institutions”. Political representation, a lobby, could help medical professionals to solve problems of the sector. But today the law does not allow to form a party on a professional basis, but any professional community can find its own political party, which will implement political lobbying for it.

“All the parties represented in the State Duma today have had every opportunity to exercise this lobbying. Today we see the result – the collapse of the health care system,” Slabunova said. She stressed that YABLOKO was ready to offer the resource that was of great shortage – the political will to solve the problems of the sector.

“Is there any real opposition today? There is no such in the State Duma. All the parties represented [in the Russian parliament] serve the ruling party. The only real opposition party in the country is YABLOKO, Emilia Slabunova noted.

YABLOKO Chairperson specially emphasised that the party was ready to nominate representatives of medical community candidates in the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

“We are pleased to consider the candidacies of all those who are willing to mobilise their professional and civic activism,” Slabunova said.

Today was the second stage of the 10th (26th) Extraordinary Pirogov Congress of doctors. The Pirogov movement of doctors is an all-Russian public movement. The movement was Russian Medical Association was revived in the 1st (17th) All-Russian Pirogov Congress of doctors in 1995. The goals of the movement are consolidation of the professional medical community in Russia, protection of rights and interests of doctors, health care workers, development of the principles of self-governing in the community, preservation of humanistic and moral traditions of Russian medicine and professional expert analysis of the problems of the sector.