Belarusian doctors argue with Lukashenko: they do not receive salaries of thousands of dollars

Alexander Lukashenko said literally the following: "Some doctors receive thousands of dollars. However that concerns only a few of them, those who conduct surgeries at the level of Western technology". The context implied that these professionals could be found in the Republican practical scientific centers and among doctors performing liver transplantations and those preparing for heart surgeries in the course of the following year. The Vice Prime Minister Aleksandr Kosinets who was present in the hall said that highly qualified specialists earned around and and a half - two million dollars and other doctors were making 700 dollars a month.

A Correspondent of a TV programme "Zavtra tvojej strany" made an attempt to find such highly paid doctors in the country.

The Director of RNPTS "Cardiology" Alexander Mrochek was talking about how much the country appreciated the work of cardio surgeons at a press conference recently. He lamented that there was a real threat of the outflow of qualified cardio surgeons from Belarus into Russia, where their hard work would be valued twice as much. According to Alexander Mrocheka, the leading Belarusian cardio surgeons today, such as Professor Yuri Ostrovsky (leader in a group of doctors who carried out the first heart transplant in Belarus) and the Deputy Director RNPTS "Cardiology", professor and a surgeon Vyacheslav Yanushko earn on average 2.5 million Belarusian rubles a month. An expert on virtually the full range of cardio interventions, a candidate for medical sciences, the head of surgery department Alexander Shket, earns slightly more than 2 million. Cardio surgeons, performing operations, are excluded from the list of high-tech specialists and have even lower wages, i.e. 1-1.5 million rubles.

Those doctors who carried out this year's first liver transplant and have already conducted six such operations, according to "Zavtra tvojej strany", also have incomes far from those declared yesterday by Alexander Lukashenko and Alexander Kosinets.

“I earn a lot”, told "Zavtra tvojej strany" Oleg Rummo, a team leader of Transplantology 9 – the second clinical hospital in Minsk and a candidate of medical sciences. “I do not want to complain. I am in medicine because of the call my heart, there were high salaries in medicine was not high salaries. Today, I earn 2 million 700 thousand roubles a month. Our team has the highest salary, the rest of my colleagues, on average, receive 2-2.5 million rubles. However the fact that we are conducting surgery on liver transplant in no way influenced our salaries. We performed highly technical surgeries before. And if I earn 2 million 700 thousand rubles, it is due to operations, to my night duty shifts and to my position of Deputy Chief Doctor of the hospital for surgery.

For almost three years a presidential decree on improving the material incentives for certain categories of doctors is being enforced. It was signed in December 2005 and aims at raising the salaries of doctors of the high and the first category up to 3.5 times. In order to receive additional benefits applicants must "carry out high-tech and complex medical interventions and follow up with intensive care patients after such medical interventions".

However the reality is not so bright as planned. Nominal salaries were increased for doctors, while benefits for the complexity factor of surgical interventions were abolished. As a result the wages went up insignificantly.

The fact that doctors do not earn more than 2.5-3 million rubles was confirmed in RNPTS "Mother and Child", in RNPTS for orthopedics and traumatology, and in RNPTS for medical oncology and radiology.

“Some types of treatment of malignant tumors are performed only by the specialists of our centre in Belarus”, said a representative of the Republican scientific and practical centre of medical oncology and radiology. For instance it concerns high frequency ablation, which is penetration into the center of the tumor under control of X-rays antennas that conduct high frequency waves and heating the tissue up to C 96 degrees. Cancer cells 3-4 cm in size are burned out under the influence of such temperature. Other surgical interventions are not less complex, for instance, craniofacial resection, which is performed on head and neck tumors. However the highest salary of a doctor in our centre does not reach three million Belarusian rubles.

"If there are no such highly paid doctors among specialists of the leading clinics of Belarus, then where can they be found?", reasonably observed our interviewer.

Incidentally, the leadership of Belarus with enviable regularity is trying to convince the Russian mass-media audience that Belarusians live well. For instance, recently the President stated that the Belarusian milkmaids’ salary was reportedly $ 600. Back then Belarusian journalists tried to find heroines of the Presidential quotations however did not succeed.

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