Woman from Makhachkala suburb reports about bribes in hospitals

Patu Abdullaeva, a resident of Dagestan, complains about bribe extortions at local medical institutions. She has reported about it to the "Caucasian Knot" by means of the new SMS-service. The hospital denied the allegations; and Zoya Magomedova, head of the medical department of the Dagestani Ministry of Public Health, said that nobody had complained about any facts of this sort.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was told by Patu Abdullaeva, a resident of the village of Korkmaskala, that in her village, located eight kilometres off Makhachkala, the new hospital building has no equipment, while patients are kept for several years already in the old barrack, where there are no doctors - neither a cardiologist nor a surgeon - and no drugs.

"I was sent from my village to the Second City Hospital of Makhachkala to the surgery for gall bladder removal, but there is a tradition to 'thank' doctors: the equipment operator should be awarded with a thousand roubles; the surgeon - with five thousand, the anaesthesiologist - with five hundred. These 'rates' were named by postoperative patients. Although I have a hospital appointment, doctors say there are no vacant beds," said Abdullaeva and added that she gave five hundred roubles to the doctor at the reception, after which she was admitted to hospital. "If they take money, they should probably give receipts," said the woman.

According to her story, the hospital has no drugs; so she had to buy drugs for herself for five thousand roubles. "I was in hospital and heard Mr Putin saying that money had been allotted to all the regions; he asked to tell him if some hospital lacks drugs. I wrote a letter to President Medvedev and sent it by e-mail," the resident of Dagestan said.

"Let her name who extorted and what extorted from her. For so many times I've dealt with this issue; however, when it comes to the issue of who asked for money and how much, patients say that nobody had asked for," Asadula Kichiev, deputy chief physician for treatment of the Second City Hospital of Makhachkala, answered to allegations.

According to his story, the drugs have always been in the hospital, even in the times of shortage; and things were even better than in other medical institutions of the republic, since the first aid hospitals are always supplied better.

"There is another problem, when patients do not want domestic drugs, and prefer foreign-made ones. For example, there are our locally-made Cerebrolizat and imported Cerebrolysin. But nobody cancelled the former one; it is approved for use and acts same as the latter one," said Kichiev.

Zoya Magomedova, head of the medical department of the Dagestani Ministry of Public Health, has assured that in the course of the year they received no complaints about money extortions for patients' treatment. "When people start complaining, and we make a check, patients themselves say that they had not complained about anything," she said. According to her story, there are no problems with drugs either.