INEKO Analyst: Coronavirus Failed to Test Slovakia's Health Sector

Bratislava, July 4 (TASR) - The coronavirus outbreak failed to check whether adopted measures were sufficient and correctly set and whether the Slovak health care sector would be able to cope up with coronavirus in case of its more significant spread, said Dusan Zachar, an analyst at the Institute for Economic and Social Reforms (INEKO) when evaluating Health Minister Marek Krajci's (OLaNO) first 100 days in the office. However, Zachar stated that the health sector did what it could, stressing it's impossible to catch up with 15 years of a reform idleness in a month. "When taking over the government, Slovakia was ready to manage the crisis situation in the health sector neither from the material, nor from the procedural viewpoints. Therefore, it was necessary to make use of all the forces in the sector to get ready for the coronavirus spread as good as possible in a very short time," stated Zachar, adding he views measures adopted in hospitals as logical and right. Thanks to the speed of adoption of wide-spectrum anti-epidemic measures outside the health sector, Slovakia gained time to prepare itself, stated the analyst. Zachar praised Krajci's efforts to differentiate remuneration of health-care providers depending on whether they were fully available to patients during the coronavirus crisis or not. The analyst views personnel changes taken in the sector as confusing. "Communication of reasons for the changes and the transparency of tenders are still failing. Reasons given by the minister for the dismissals were very general, which prevents us from making a well-informed opinion as to whether the reasons were really relevant," he added. ko