Lukashenko discusses hospital treatment in districts, announces surprise inspections

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko raised the question of the quality of healthcare services and approaches to treating people in district hospitals and announced surprise inspections as he heard out a report by Healthcare Minister Dmitry Pinevich, BelTA has learned.

“I want to warn you that in the near future I will put together a mobile group of independent experts who will check the healthcare system and pay surprise visits to randomly chosen hospitals. And I have invited you, your deputies. Natalya Ivanovna [Natalya Kochanova] has been in charge of healthcare matters since those times, as well as the deputy prime minister... You will have only yourselves to blame. We will inspect these hospitals,” the Belarusian leader said.

In this regard, the head of state told a story about a woman who got in a hospital in Shklov District and was dying. Thanks to the intervention of the president, she was saved, and she is out of danger now. “When she was in the Shklov hospital, I practically pulled her out of the morgue. Now she is disconnected from the mechanical ventilator. Her recovery is on track,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

“One gets the impression, Dmitry Leonidovich, that you have got carried away a little bit too much by self-advancement as a minister and that you focus too much on keeping up the facade. Are you going to treat people the way I have always demanded of you? Certain things ring the alarm bell to me. People in high places receive good treatment, but what about ordinary people, patients in district hospitals? There are village first-aid stations run by feldshers who walk around and prescribe warm compresses using hard-boiled eggs, a hundred grams of liquor to drink, as in the old days, I saw it. They have nothing else,” the head of state said.