Ukraine’s Health Ministry, headed by Ukrainian-American Ulana Suprun since July, has found itself in a public confrontation with an acclaimed surgeon over the ministry’s massive health reform.
Borys Todurov, a heart surgeon and head of the Heart Institute in Kyiv, accused Suprun of negligence that he claimed has led to thousands of patients’ deaths.
In a statement he published on Facebook on Jan. 1, Todurov said that the work of his Heart Institute had been blocked, as the ministry failed drug procurement tenders and failed to carry out planned supplies of medicine and equipment to the institute.
The surgeon also blamed the Health Ministry for preventing him from opening the branches of the Heart Institute in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.
“Run, before I sue you,” Todurov wrote, addressing the ministry’s top officials.
Acting Health Minister Suprun, who was the main target of criticism, denied the accusations. The conflict also divided the public into those supporting the acclaimed heart surgeon and the backers of the reform-minded minister.
Both Todurov and Suprun got wide support among bloggers and social media users. The largest patient organizations backed the Health Ministry’s team, saying Suprun was trustworthy, graft-free and highly professional.
The conflict escalated when the media found alleged violations in the procurement of Todurov’s own Heart Institute that some said could indicate kickbacks.
Doctors’ claims
Todurov received public support from his former patients, experts, and other doctors from Ukrainian hospitals, including the prominent doctors Andriy Huk from the Institute of Neurosurgery and Svitlana Donska from the Ohmatdyt children’s hospital. They said that the conflict wasn’t a personal one between Suprun and Todurov, but rather between the medical community and the Health Ministry.
Todurov repeated his accusations at the press-conference on Jan. 17. He pointed out that 66 percent of deaths in Ukraine are caused by cardiovascular diseases, with about 450,000 people dying each year.
He said the Health Ministry was supposed to purchase drugs and equipment for his Heart Institute worth Hr 50 million ($1.8 million) in 2016, but failed to. As a result, the Institute was short of vital cardiac stimulators, valves and stents, which are necessary for heart surgery, he said.
The ministry countered that all the required tenders had been held, and that the Heart Institute received all the supplies it needed.
In 2016, a new law, backed by Suprun, put international organizations in charge of drug procurement in Ukraine in an effort to eliminate corruption.
But Todurov said the law was doing his clinic more harm than good.
“We are told this saves our money, but it costs us tens of thousands of lives,” he said.
International procurement
Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said at an open cabinet meeting on Jan. 18 that he wanted the sides of the conflict to focus on fighting corruption, not each other.
“Our main goal is to fight corruption. And that’s just what the team of the Health Ministry led by Suprun is – not corrupt,” he said.
Suprun said at the same meeting that she was aware of how serious the situation with heart disease was in Ukraine. But conducting procurement through international organizations helps improve it, she claimed. Suprun said that while her predecessors at the Health Ministry bought 7,179 stents in 2016, her team will be able to buy more than 10,000 stents for the same amount of money in 2017. A stent is a small tube that is used in a cardiac treatment to treat narrow or weak arteries.
Suprun said that, despite what Todurov claimed, the Health Ministry had completed state procurement for 2016, and has already started purchases for 2017.
“For the first time we will receive the drugs in the same year that we ordered them,” she said.
Deputy Health Minister Oleksandr Linchevskyy added that the Heart Institute will have Hr 141 million ($5 million) for medicine and Hr 40 million ($1.4 million) for equipment, compared to the Hr 50 million ($1.8 million) that was allocated in 2016. He added that all the requested 1,363 stents were supplied to the institute in 2016.
Regarding the opening of branches of the Heart Institute, which Todurov accused Linchevskyy of blocking, he said that Todurov’s request to open the branches had been weak, lacking practical details or a financial analysis.
Patient support
The representatives of Ukraine’s biggest and most active patient organizations joined Suprun and Linchevsky at their press conference to assure the nation that the new team at the Health Ministry is doing well.
Dmytro Sherembey, head of the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, famous for his numerous protests against corruption in the Health Ministry, said that “the ministry has never had such a team before.”
“And the hysteria we see is just an attempt by a corrupt system to protect the assets it is losing,” he said.
Suprun and her team were also supported by Olga Stefanyshyna, the executive director of the non-governmental organization Patients of Ukraine. She said that the fact that Suprun backs the drug procurements through international organizations shows that “medical reform is working.”
Oleksandra Ustinova from the Anti-Corruption Action Center called the criticism of Suprun “an artificial scandal aimed avoiding international procurement and going back to old corrupt schemes.”
Peacemaking fails
As soon as the press conference was over, Suprun hurried to a meeting of the parliamentary healthcare committee. There she was supposed to meet Todurov in person, answer all questions from worried lawmakers, and put an end to the conflict.
But the meeting didn’t go smoothly.
Only five of 13 committee members showed up, which left the meeting two members short of a quorum.
Committee head Olha Bohomolets, a lawmaker with the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, stressed that the committee would not decide who was right or wrong, and only wanted facts from Todurov, and ways to solve the existing problems from Suprun.
After Todurov repeated his accusations again, Suprun thanked the committee for inviting her to the meeting, but said she thought they would at least have a quorum, so that it would be a real meeting, and not just another press conference.
“We’ve already had a press conference, and we’ve already answered all those statements. Thank you,” she said, and left the meeting together with her team.
The Reanimation Package of Reforms, patients’ associations and non-governmental organizations, sent out a statement on Jan. 19, warning Ukraine’s authorities “that there is a real threat of revenge by corrupt clans, which are doing their best to regain influence in various spheres of public administration, in particular, in the field of healthcare.”
“Therefore, the experts of the Reanimation Package of Reforms address the president, the prime minister, and the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, drawing their attention to the attempts to block the work of the reformist team at the Health Ministry,” the letter said.
