Prague, June 28 (CTK) – The Czech Doctors’ Chamber (CLK) has convoked an extraordinary congress for September 22, shortly before the autumn regional election, to deal with the healthcare crisis, CLK president Milan Kubek told reporters on Tuesday.
He added that he had decided on the extraordinary congress for the first time in ten years in the post since the situation was really serious.
A meeting of the CLK district organisations’ chairpersons recommended to hold the congress since the government was not dealing with the situation.
The CLK will invite PM Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD), the health and finance ministers, Svatopluk Nemecek (CSSD) and Andrej Babis (ANO), as well as healthcare experts from individual parties and leading medicine professors to the congress.
Its main topics will be the Czech healthcare crisis and seeking its solutions, Kubek said.
“The crisis of the Czech health care has been deepening both in terms of finances, since the healthcare expenditures are ones of the lowest in the EU, and personnel,” Kubek said.
Hospitals are short of doctors and nurses, they reduce the operation of some wards or even close them. The CLK has also registered some cases of illegal employment of foreigners with a dubious qualification in Czech healthcare facilities, he added.
Kubek said the CLK had warned the government of the crisis more than three months ago and it released regular information on the crisis impact in its campaign “Healthcare Calls for Help.”
The CLK points out that it is no longer able to guarantee safe healthcare under current conditions.
“Unfortunately, neither the Health Ministry nor the government are tackling the crisis in the Czech healthcare sector. We can do nothing but to convoke an extraordinary congress in Prague,” Kubek said.
Politicians have caused the crisis as they pass the respective laws and decide on state insurance payments as well as on taxes, medicine prices and conditions of health care personnel education, and only they have tools to solve it, Kubek said.
“The congress would be pointless without politicians,” he concluded.
