Although we weren’t always understood, we go on, Deputy Minister of Health

[Info-Prim Neo article from the series “2011: how it was and how it wasn't”] 2011 was a year with lots of achievements in the domain of healthcare, but with many challenges as well. “Sometimes we weren’t understood. In other case, we didn’t understand why things happened in a certain way. These were challenges the Ministry of Health overcame and we’ll continue the reforms”, the Deputy Minister of Health told Info-Prim Neo. The official named the regulation of medicines’ prices as one of the biggest achievements. “We managed to control the price. Every year it grew a lot. For example, in 2008 it increased by 20%. This year, we managed to decrease it by 2%. It’s a success considering the prices of other products are rising”, stressed Viorel Soltan. The Deputy Minister informed that the National Program of HIV/AIDS Control will continue. The AIDS Center will be responsible of the management and coordination of the whole program. “Moldova is considered a leader and example among other countries for maintaining a low rate of HIV/AIDS. If the situation worsened in other countries, we kept it under control”, said the official. Vanu Jereghi, executive director of the Institute for Human Rights (IDOM), agrees that this year was crucial for the healthcare domain in what concerns the respecting of human rights, especially of persons that have HIV/AIDS. “In 2011, discriminatory terms and stipulations have been eliminated from Moldovan legislation. Although there are some internal regulations that can cause discriminatory situations, the legislation was cleaned of everything that could discriminate HIV positive people”, said the IDOM director. Deputy Minister of Health Viorel Soltan declared that despite intense collaboration with international partners for implementing several projects, things didn’t always work out perfectly and often the work was done in the last minute. “Thus, the reconstruction of the Republican Clinic Hospital, financed by the World Bank and the EU, nearly lost the funding. We had to sign the contract with the agency that would do the works until December, although the methodology imposed by our partners needed more than 7 months for procurement. However, we signed it even earlier and obtained the €5 million grant”, said the official. He added that Moldova signed a public-private partnership agreement for the first time and obtained another $10.2 million for renovating healthcare centers in rural areas. 70 centers will be renovated or fully rebuilt. “I can’t say we planned something and failed. There things that simply aren’t going as smooth as we’d want. For example, the Law on medical devices. We realized there must be some order on this market and tried to promote this law. It was approved by the Government, but it’s still debated in the parliamentary commissions. We hoped this law would be adopted this year, because we really needed it”, said Viorel Soltan. 2011 also brought reforms at the Heart Surgery Center. “We decided the money should go for the medical act itself and not some unnecessary services. All the speculation and misunderstandings around this reform were only provocations, but we managed to explain the people why the reform was so necessary”, said Viorel Soltan. Among the domains that require serious improvements, IDOM director Vanu Jereghi named the psychiatric domain. Despite the good legislation, the psychiatric practices are below-par. Another problem, according to Vanu Jereghi, are the healthcare-related trials which are often delayed exaggeratedly. IDOM sued the Ministry of Health for several years for modifying forms that employees must fill in after a sick leave. Vanu Jereghi considers employers should not care about the disease itself, but only about its duration. [Mariana Galben, Info-Prim Neo]