Volgograd resident complains to Medvedev on poor work of hospitals

A 27-year-old resident of Volgograd has posted in his blog under his nickname Yanissimo in LiveJournal an appeal to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev with complains against the obstacles he faced in treating his little daughter, deeply rooted into the health care system. His story has caused wide public resonance. Yesterday, on December 6, Mr Medvedev read the text of the open appeal.

The blogger writes in his post entitled "Genocide (?)" that he and his wife brought a sick child in need of surgery to the Filatov Children's Hospital in Moscow, since the state of things in Volgograd Hospital No. 7 "is the most terrifying even by doctors' words."

According to Yanissimo, for placing the child to the Moscow clinic they needed an additional "certificate from the Department of Public Health." According to the father, he spent 6.5 hours in the queue waiting to get the paper. He asserts that many from that queue left the office without the required certificates. "They left for various reasons: not all the documents on hand; end of patience to wait; despair (an old lady said, 'I'd rather die AT HOME')," runs the appeal to Medvedev.

However, after receiving the certificate, the LiveJournal user writes, troubles were not over. In his words, according to the rules of the hospital, one of the parents should stay in the ward with a child under 3; however, as it turned out, no bed is provided to the parent; so that parents have to sleep on chairs. There is no room to put a folding-bed in the ward.

"Tell me, my President, have you tried to live on a chair for 3 days?" My wife did it for two weeks!" Yanissimo is indignant.

According to the residents of Volgograd, a bed in the paid ward is 7000 roubles per day, which is equal to monthly salary of a teacher in Volgograd.

The blogger stresses in his appeal that he has no claims to rank-and-file doctors and hospital staff. According to his version, physicians "are doing their job and deserve every gratitude." However, the attitude of the country's public health system to people was treated by Yanissimo in his appeal to Medvedev as "genocide of the nation."

The Yanissimo's post has more than 3600 comments and is among most visited pages of the LiveJournal.

A user under the nickname rich4me wrote in his comment: "24,000 children under 5 years of age died in 2010, because their parents had no money for treatment. In total, about 300 million roubles could have saved them. In 2010, the movement 'Nashi' received 450 million roubles from the state budget."

The Russian Ministry of Public Health has reacted to criticism of the Volgograd resident by promising to modernize children's clinics in the next two years. However, as reported by the RIA "Novosti", neither Moscow Public Health Office nor the Filatov Children's Hospital gave any comments.

President Medvedev has also read the appeal, the "Echo Moskvy" Radio reports. Alexei Venediktov, its editor-in-chief, gave the materials to the President. The report mentioned that the President said taking the papers that he had been aware of the story. However, Medvedev's reaction to the appeal is not known yet.