I come from the red zone and yesterday I was in a situation like what was happening in Italy, that I didn't have a place in the hospital for young people and I didn't have a place to transport them, said the president of the Union of Doctors and Pharmacists of Serbia, Rade Panić, and wept on the show on TV N1 .
"Serbia's healthcare system is officially broken. You can hear that I'm very excited. Yesterday I was in a situation like what happened in Italy. In my professional life, I did not expect to find myself in such a situation, I had no place for people who we in medicine consider to be young, nor did I have anywhere to transport them", says Panić, visibly shaken, who currently works in the "red zone" and adds that the situation is worse than in July, that "clinical pictures of patients are becoming more difficult... there are more young people and a huge number of patients and we are not very successful in treatment in intensive care, there is a high mortality rate when the patient is in the most serious condition".
Panić assessed that the Government's measures in the fight against the virus were too late and identified Minister Zlatibor Lončar as one of the main culprits.
"The helplessness I felt is felt by all healthcare workers throughout Serbia, and Minister Lončar is responsible for that... It is urgent, not that there will be no room in hospitals in Serbia, but there is no room in the covid hospitals... The measures are delayed by a month, not I know why the Crisis Staff does not sit in this extraordinary, emergency situation 24 hours a day. This is the duty of the Crisis Staff, I call on them to wake up, if they do not know what is happening in Serbia, to ask for official cars and to take a ride and see what is happening", Panić points out.
He points out that "it is urgent to take measures that are significantly stricter than the ones that are in place now"
"I'm not talking about the lockdown, but if the situation is such that there is no money, that not all available (health) staff from the bureau will be employed, then that should be clearly said to the citizens of Serbia and that they should be asked to endure three weeks of lockdown, so that in the spring we could say that we are still functioning", he says.
Panić reminded that the Union of Doctors and Pharmacists has been demanding the dismissal of Minister Lončar for two years because the results of his work in the last seven years have been disastrous, and that this can be seen in the most drastic way right now during the epidemic.
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