Healthcare to Be Brought Under Control

From now on civil servants and lawmakers will have to face up to a constructive opposition on the part of grassroots medical organizations, with transparency as their cardinal principle. Such is the belief of the activists of a newly formed Federation of Public Organizations for Promoting the Healthcare of Civil Society, which recently held a presentation. Why do people, distanced as they are from medicine, take decisions on how the healthcare system should function? Why do laws force doctors into shady business? How come the positive experience of isolated medical establishments do not become common practice? These are but a few questions posed by the organization which is determined to change attitudes of rank-and- file citizens who have grown used to free medical care, taking it for granted and expecting it to eliminate the consequences of the neglect of their own health.

The Federation’s plans are overly ambitious. Its members have even formulated a concept for the preservation of health of a nation. Its linchpin is the formation of a holistic model, namely a combination of physical, mental, and social health. However, the document in itself is more of a statement of the all too familiar postulates of the preeminence of healthcare and its social significance. The practical steps to be taken by the organization with a membership of over a million and a half include the establishment of a public board of experts to assess the quality of medical services and products, as well as the organization of a system of public oversight bodies to protect the rights of patients and healthcare workers. Federation members are also vying for a more active participation in the legislative process and are pressing to be assigned functions of oversight over the respective bodies of power.

However, as Liubomyr Pyrih, M.D., President of the All-Ukrainian Association of Doctors was right to observe, despite the statutory rights of public organizations, they are neither protected nor realized in Ukraine. For example, they have been assigned a role of observers in the Health of the Nation program scheduled to last until 2011. For that matter, an example of a similar short-lived organization, Ukraine’s Pulse, does not inspire optimism.

At the same time, commenting on the unification of associations of doctors of various specialization, the parliamentary committee on the protection of the mother and child said it was high time this happened. Deputy chairman of the committee secretariat Mykola Pryz believes that Ukrainian medics are partly to blame for their problems. Engrossed in their work, they spare neither time nor effort to actively defend their interests on the political stage. Incidentally, in the West it is up to practitioners to solve healthcare problems.