Ukraine: Unhealthy mess

Health Ministry of Ukraine had never been famous for logic in their statements; however, there is no explanation to events of this week at all.

The information of 46 mortal cases from grippe was refuted by the Ukraine Health Ministry on 19^th January 2016. ‘

The data on 46 people who have died from the flu is not confirmed by the central reference laboratory of the state institution “Ukrainian Centre for control and monitoring of diseases,” the press-service of the Health Ministry. ‘All people who died as a result of flu came to started seeking medical attention when was too late and people were not vaccinated against grippe’, UCCM. . (the page was deleted later from the site of the Health Ministry, however saved copy in cache Google is available here http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0qtYc0m6Y5kJ:www.moz.gov.ua/ua/portal/pre_20160118_c.html+&cd=1&hl=ru&ct=clnk&gl=ru&client=opera).

Today health Minister from “friendly” Georgia Kvitashvil, who is a great specialist of local hospitals privatizations and collapse of the whole health system announced: ‘Unfortunately, we have got for today 51^st confirmed mortal case. It is evidence of the late seeking of medical attention by people from risk groups. I would like to ask you once again to be more watchful and even if you hesitate that it is grippe, g to the hospital.

How press-service of the Ministry and the Minister itself interact remains a mystery. But, the case is not in this. The thing is that people are dying. The statistics of the Minister itself shows: however, the Minister pointed out that there are no basis to panic.

The biggest amount of deaths was fixed in the Odessa region. ‘Vinnitsa region-7, Volyn region-2, Dnetsk region-4, Zhitomir region-1, Zaporozhie region-1, Niklaev region-1, Odessa region-20, Rovno regin-3, Harkov region-2, Cherkassy region, Chernovzi region-1, Lvov region-1, Kiev region-5’, Kvitashvili reported.

As we see, the biggest amount of diseased people is in the region where the position of governor is held by his former chief Mihail Saakashvili.

Rather than deal with pressing problems such as the flu epidemic, quality of public utilities of the city and the region, that dies not improve speed of ambulance crew response to the challenge, Mr. Governor in its turn is in Mariupol, poses for the camera, and take and post “secret” maps (I do not imagine who need them).

It looks like a cheap spin. As it was said in my previous article Joy of Ukraine, on orders over Media try to avert people’s attention from the situation in the country with the attractive of public attention to “secret maps” with the location of checkpoints.

Meanwhile, the population is keeping silence and suffering, and people take as an entitlement that if the ambulance arrives, they can do nothing as a result of medicine absence. Or the ambulance does not arrive like in Odessa, where mortal cases from frigorism were fixed.

How Kvitashvili noticed, there is such a risk group that includes people who were not vaccinated. All influenza vaccines issued every year and they have to correspond to composition of strains, in regard to the recommendations of WHO for each continent. The question is where and for what money to take it? The mass is still there, and people are dying….

Georgy Morozov,editor-in-chief of Novorossia Today

Translated into English by Nataliya Sinyavskaya