Underfunding, corruption allegations, internal feuding, facilities in disrepair -- flaws revealed at a Moscow paediatric cancer ward have shone a harsh spotlight on the afflictions plaguing Russia's public healthcare system.
Along with 20 of his colleagues, Rykov quit the hospital, which describes itself as Russia's biggest oncological clinic, in September, accusing its new chief of mismanagement. "In the rooms there were no lockers to put things, we had to buy them ourselves, as well as camp beds so that we could sleep next to our children," Tsvetkova said.The oncologists who resigned accused the new management, which took over in June, of cutting their salaries by 35 percent, as well as changing treatment regimes to save money.
About 30 parents have written to President Vladimir Putin asking him to reconsider the policy but"nothing came of our message," Tsvetkova said. In October, neonatologists -- treating newborns -- threatened to resign from a hospital in the city of Perm in the Urals mountains over low pay and long hours.And in Moscow in November, two renowned specialists in children's kidney transplants condemned the veto on foreign medicines, saying no Russian equivalents existed.The government stresses the need to overhaul an inefficient health system, inherited from the Soviet era and hit hard by the economic turmoil of the 1990s.
Russia's health expenditure was 3.7 percent of GDP last year. That's much less than the 9.5 percent in France or Germany, according to Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development data.
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