Employees of the Gudermes CDH publicly apologize for their protest

The staff of the Gudermes Central District Hospital (CDH) has stated, on air of the state television, that their complaints about the deficit of protective means were unjustified. Residents of Chechnya believe that employees of the CDH were forced to apologize.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on May 14, the newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" made public an appeal from the staff of the Gudermes Central District Hospital who complained about the lack of protective gear and the need to buy protective items by themselves. After Magomed Daudov, the speaker of the Chechen parliament, had visited the Central District Hospital, the chief doctor was dismissed. Shakhid Akhmadov, the former Chechen Minister for Public Health, was appointed the new chief doctor of the Gudermes Central District Hospital.

On May 15, in the night news programme, the "Grozny" ChGTRK (Chechen State TV and Radio Company) treated the protest of the doctors of the Gudermes CDH as "unreasonable panic", and its participants – as "provocateurs". The channel showed a video filmed at the hospital warehouse, showing packages of medical masks, anti-plague uniforms and other protective means.

Tumisha Yusupova, a nurse of the children's department of the CDH, had issued a panic message, although she was not supposed to work with coronavirus patients and was unaware of the data about the availability of necessary materials, the TV report said. "We didn't know that, but, we were frightened, and in a hurry we claimed it. Before sending this voice [message], we had to discuss it first. I was confused and said it by mistake," the nurse has confessed.

Local residents have treated this report of the "Grozny" ChGTRK as "expected." "The situation in the Gudermes CDH received a huge resonance; it was actively discussed in social networks; therefore, the report-refutation on the ChGTRK was quite an expected event. As usual, those dissatisfied were exposed as culprits and forced to apologize. It would be naive to expect something else, because our authorities and leaders are, as we can say, infallible; they are right always and in everything," Lechi, a resident of the Chechen Republic, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on May 16, 2020 at 11:30 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.