Return of Ambulance to Ministry of Health May Indicate Tabib as Unprofessional

Baku / 29.06.20 / Turan: More recently, on June 17, 329 new patients with coronavirus were registered in Azerbaijan per day. Then this figure seemed deafeningly high, but the Tabib Medical Territorial Administration Unit, to which the President transferred the authority of the Ministry of Health in the fight against the pandemic, promised to cope with its tasks. The chairman of Tabib’s board Ramin Bayramli said that there are enough free beds in COVID hospitals.

But daily, more and more Azerbaijani citizens were infected with the coronavirus. Tabib stopped hospitalizing patients with mild manifestations of the disease, citing international experience. In fact, as the number of daily infections approached the symbolic mark of 500, hospitalization was denied to severe patients, too.

The press began to receive complaints about the death of coronavirus patients, whom the ambulance subordinate to Tabib refused to hospitalize. This was stated in the article Collapse of Tabib’s Work - Reason for People’s Distrust in This Department, published by Turan on June 25. And on June 24, by a decision from above, the ambulance was taken from Tabib and returned to the Ministry of Health.

"Conducting of hygienic, epidemiological, quarantine-organizational, including preventive, measures during the period of a special quarantine regime in the foci of the coronavirus infection in the city of Baku, identifying locally infected with the coronavirus infection and providing them with outpatient and emergency medical care at home conditions will be implemented by the Ministry of Health," an official release said.

Two days later, the President said that with the increase in the number of people infected with coronavirus, there may not be enough medical personnel to treat coronavirus in the country. Obviously, he was referring to the doctors working in the Tabib system, since this agency is engaged in the fight against the pandemic. The solution to the problem of the shortage of doctors was found in involving specialists who remained under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health. And the transfer of the Ambulance, about the work of which there were especially many complaints from the population, to the Health Ministry can be considered a statement that Tabib cannot cope with the task of combating the coronavirus pandemic.

On June 24, the number of COVID patients detected per day was 590, while the day before it was 508.

Indirectly, the Ministry of Health’s response received by the Report website leads to this conclusion. The Ministry of Health said that the Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers instructed one medical structure of the state to help another to resolve the problems arising in the fight against COVID-19: "This order is temporary. Methodological recommendations to some clinics during the pandemic will be issued by the Ministry of Health, and public health facilities will work together to prevent the spread of the virus. "

In the social forum Disput.az, two popular opinions draw attention to the redistribution of powers between the two departments:

- I always thought that the worst that could happen to our medicine was the Ministry of Health. Tabib in a short time proved the opposite.

- From the fact that the mess was divided between two useless institutions, it will not cease to be one.

There are many publications in the Azerbaijani press, in which the actual failure of Tabib’s work is explained, among other things, by the business interest of Tabib’s board chairman Ramin Bayramli. They write that he, along with the management of Tabib, simultaneously owns İnci clinics and laboratories. If this is so, then we can talk about a conflict of state and private interests, as İnci is one of three private medical departments in the country that have the right to conduct human health tests to determine coronavirus infection.

There is no information on the head (s) of this company in the official İnci website. There are no names or surnames at all. When calling an İnci, an unnamed employee said he can only know the head of the laboratory in which he works. And Ramin Bayramli does not have time to appear in İnci, the employee replied. Does this mean that Bayramli owns this clinic? The telephone interlocutor said he did not know.

What lies behind the return of part of authority from Tabib to the Ministry of Health?

The decision was caused by the fact that Тabib did not have time to understand how the ambulance works in emergency conditions and therefore the ambulance was transferred to the Ministry of Health with extensive experience. The main thing is that the redistribution does not lead to a conflict between departments and misunderstanding between structures, as ambulance workers will suffer from this,” said Zaur Oruj, head of the Medprosvet medical website, to Turan.

“It is very important during the day to establish communications between the structures transferred to the Ministry of Health from Tabib so that when an ambulance is trying to take a patient to hospital, there would not be problems in the waiting room there. This should not happen. I’m sure that the decision makers gave the necessary instructions to the Ministry of Health and Tabib, so that they work harmoniously and do not torment the people," the expert summed up. —0—