Pandemic gave medicine chances to develop - Radiy Khabirov

Paradoxically, the coronavirus epidemic has given us a chance to make health care more potent, the Head of Bashkiria Radiy Khabirov said at a discussion during the Gaidar Forum. He took part in the panel session "Rethinking the National Health System".

The Head of Bashkiria stressed that the primary system needs to be developed - polyclinics and rural health stations, where people address first.

"When I started working and traveling around the republic, I saw different sorts of things. Our rural health stations were located in a barrack for German prisoners of war, in a building built in 1890. Meanwhile, we have 1.7 million people and 1960 rural health stations in the rural population. The federal program for the comprehensive modernization of the primary system is beneficial - the republic will receive 18 billion rubles through it until 2025. Remarkably, this issue is being resolved. They used to pay attention to large medical centers' creation, and we have them - oncological, cardiological ones.

The second most crucial issue is personnel. As I have already said, if all the graduates of 2021 came to work in health care in our country, the issue of shortage of personnel would be resolved. However, they did not. Where do they go? Someone understands that medicine is not their calling at all and finds work in another area; others go into commercial healthcare. We cannot solve this problem with money either - we give a million to a paramedic; they work for three years and leave. Therefore, I believe that it is necessary to help medical college graduates who have worked as nurses and paramedics to obtain a higher education. These are proven people who will not give up medicine. They need to be invested in, and these funds will not be spent in vain.

The third is new technologies. Out of 1960 rural health stations, 1800 already have an Internet connection. Rural paramedics can, for example, send a patient's cardiogram to the Republican Cardiology Center and get expert advice. Alternatively, another issue  - one can simply contact a doctor to open a sick leave and not make an appointment. In general, the future belongs to telemedicine. That is what I wanted to say, and many thanks to the doctors," the Head of Bashkiria summed up.