There is something deeply disgusting in the way people of power in Kosovo react when facing questions about the lack of drugs in public health institutions. Instead of giving answers, taking responsibility, and showing what they are doing to solve the problem, they choose another path: reasoning, relativism, propaganda and the attack on journalists who make the situation public.
This time it comes to an issue that cannot be addressed as a common political debate. It’s about the lack of essential drugs at the University Clinical Centre in Kosovo, including medicines and therapies for cancer patients. It is about people who struggle for life, families who try to provide therapy, and expenses that many of them cannot afford.
It is not about any luxury, nor about any additional service that citizens may push for another time, but it is about drugs on which to treat serious diseases and, in certain cases, the very lives of patients.
Media reports in recent months have repeatedly documented a lack of drugs in Oncology. Patients and family members have indicated that they are forced to buy their own therapies, even though they are part of the Essencial List. In some cases, spending amounts to thousands of euros. All you need to do is take a moment to get the nonsense of the situation. A family that now faces fear, anxiety, and uncertainty that cancer brings must also find thousands of euros for drugs that the state would need to provide. But if he doesn’t have that money, what happens?
Should the patient give up therapy because the institutions have failed to perform an essential task?
Of the officials, we hear reasoning about tender procedures, delays of economic operators, lack of authorization for drugs or other technical problems. But these reasonings do not solve the patient’s problem. They don’t even pay him the drugs. They don’t even change their time. Nor do they dispel fears that his therapy could be interrupted.
The drug supply, of course, has procedures and challenges. No one claims that any process is simple. But that is why institutions, budgets, ministries, boards and hospital management exist. To plan, predict, procurement and guarantee supply. If these processes fail consistently, responsibility cannot be eliminated by citing a tender procedure.
And here comes the next problem, perhaps as disturbing as the lack of drugs themselves: the response of power to those who do these public problems. Instead of handling their responsibilities, power deals with journalists. Rather than seek solutions, he tries to discredit those who seek answers. Rather than listen to patients and family members, it activates propaganda mechanisms on social networks to shift attention from the problem to those who report it.
Source Layer: Dukeagini