Despair! “This cannot continue!” 0 12

"This cannot continue!" - quotes Latvian television the head of the Emergency Medical Service, Liene Cipule. This refers to the periodically occurring queues of ambulances at the Stradins Hospital's emergency department. Often, teams with patients wait in such queues for up to 2 hours! Not only is the patient forced to spend all this time in the vehicle, waiting for the emergency room staff to finally accept them, but the teams themselves are also unavailable to respond to other calls during this time. This problem has not been resolved for a very long time.

It is obvious, and this is acknowledged by all medical professionals and healthcare organizers, that the capital needs another round-the-clock hospital. It is urgently needed! And it exists - it is the Riga 1st Hospital! However, the Ministry of Health has not even attempted to secure funding for the revival of the 1st Hospital as a round-the-clock emergency care facility all these years. Instead, the Minister of Health, Hosam Abu Meri, has been holding fruitless negotiations with the Riga City Council, even though it was clear that the local government could not help in this matter - the council is not going to finance the state healthcare system from its own budget!

And now the minister stated in an interview with Latvian TV that he intends to discuss this issue with... the mayor of Riga, Kleinbergs, on Thursday. Abu Meri could just as well discuss this issue... with his wife. The result would be the same!

Without state funding, it is impossible to revive a round-the-clock hospital!