Mihailović: Not enough pediatricians and pediatric specialists

In Montenegro, children are not provided with certain basic health services, there are not enough pediatricians and there is a lack of specialist children's doctors in the entire country, said the executive director of the Parents Association, Kristina Mihailović.

In an interview with the MINA agency, she assessed that the state is only declaratively focused on children and their rights, and that it is not properly focused on the health of the youngest citizens.

Mihailović stated that the Family Caravan project, which the association implemented with UNICEF and the European Union, enabled them to talk directly with parents from all Montenegrin municipalities about children's health and the services they receive.

"Based on that, we concluded that a lot of things should be changed," Mihailović said.

She said that Montenegro is far from having a sufficient number of pediatricians, since there is absolutely not a single pediatrician in certain municipalities, such as Žabljak and Plužine.

"The smallest number of municipalities do not have them at all, and some five to six municipalities have pediatricians who come only once a week or once every 15 days, which is also not enough or adequate. Compared to the total number of municipalities in Montenegro, that is a really big number," Mihailović said.

She said that in a significant part of municipalities, pediatricians are tens of kilometers away and only come from time to time, which, as she pointed out, is also not a solution.

"There are not enough pediatricians even in those municipalities where there are pediatricians on a daily basis - there is an extremely large number of patients, children, who are referred to a particular pediatrician, and then of course this affects the scheduling of crowds and prevention, which is otherwise rarely talked about," Mihailović believes. .

As she said, it discourages immunization, for which the state blames the parents for the low percentage.

"Parents are not to blame for the fact that precisely because of the lack of these basic health services, they do not have the opportunity to receive vaccines at all, even when they are necessary," Mihailović said.

She said that the Parents Association worked with the municipalities as part of the Family Caravan, to see what the municipalities could do and in what way they could eventually influence things to change.

"Then, for example, we found out that specifically Žabljak and Plužine offer pediatricians to use the apartments where they will live, in order to come and provide their children with health care. However, it's not that simple either," said Mihailović.

As she said, municipalities may not have enough competences in health and education to influence some things, but they still have some basic ones, where they could support institutions from the national level and health centers, to provide health workers with adequate working conditions.

"The census is underway. We focused on who we are and what we are by nationality, and it is much more important to get data on population movements, so that based on how many children we have in municipalities, we can make a plan to solve these problems as soon as possible", she pointed out. is Mihailović.

She said that she is also waiting for the UNICEF report that was made recently, in order to get very clear and precise information about the state of maternity hospitals in Montenegro.

As Mihailović added, those reports during the previous years were not good, so it was repeatedly recommended that things must change much faster, that Montenegro lags behind in the quality of health services, and that its health system has some procedures that are no longer applied anywhere.

According to her, in previous reports it was stated that the relationship with patients, most often with women, must be changed, as well as that the quality of health care, especially for children who were born prematurely and who have certain difficulties, is not good enough. .

"I reckon that based on that comprehensive report, when we hear those results, we will finally start doing something," Mihailović said.

According to her, the Parents Association will inform the authorities with the conclusions and the situation on the ground that they saw during the Family Caravan.

Mihailović said that a complete report is being prepared, which will be presented to the public and delivered to all institutions of the system.

"We will also include what is particularly important to us, the concrete suggestions of parents, in our further activities, that is, work plans," concluded Mihailović.