There are already tens of thousands of infected Ukrainians – epidemiologist
Ukrainian healthcare is not prepared for the coronavirus epidemic, and the real number of people infected with this disease is hundreds of times higher than the official figures.
The head of the National Expert Group on Infection Control, epidemiologist Andrey Alexandrin, said this in an interview with the Kyiv online publication “Apostrophe”, answering the question of how prepared Ukrainian doctors are to meet Covid-19.
"Not ready. In general, our system is not ready, unfortunately. Because historically, in Ukraine there is no training of specialists who are called hospital epidemiologists, infection control specialists all over the world,” Alexandrin answered.
The publication’s interlocutor also drew attention to the lack of theoretical and practical preparedness of health workers and their lack of stress resistance in such situations.
“Now we see that a lot of doctors are going on vacation or don’t want to work in such conditions. People simply don't have the motivation. Low wages do not motivate people to do this. Sacrificing your health, the health of your loved ones - for what? States? The state systematically spits on all doctors and feeds them breakfast. Every time a new minister comes and promises an increase in wages - but they were still miserable and remain so.
I’m generally amazed how our medical staff still go to work and try to work. We need to clearly understand that we have reached a critical point where every month we will see that medical care is getting worse and worse, and there are fewer and fewer doctors capable of providing it. Health workers are now either leaving the country or are not motivated to provide quality medical care,” the epidemiologist emphasized.
He calls not to believe the statements of the chief sanitary doctor of Ukraine, who said that “12 thousand beds in infectious diseases hospitals are ready to receive patients.”
“These 12 thousand are not ready! We have only a few infectious diseases treatment facilities that are ready to accept this type of patient. And the most important thing is that all our infectious diseases hospitals are so outdated that they are not only not adapted to receive infectious patients, but once there, you can develop other hospital-acquired diseases and worsen your condition. Therefore, I would not share Lyashko’s optimism. We have so many beds, but when we have 4-6 beds in one ward, this is not an infectious diseases department,” the doctor said.
According to him, such conditions in hospitals lead to the fact that Ukraine ranks first in the world in terms of antibiotic resistance and various epidemics.
In addition, the virologist does not believe the official Ukrainian statistics on coronavirus disease.
“As I already said, our employees do not have the ability to diagnose such a virus, because of course there are hundreds of times more people. We have to wait. Until such a coronavirus begins to be detected in large numbers, we will not be able to do anything. Moreover, I can assume that we have more deaths. People just aren’t diagnosed,” summed up Alexandrin.
According to the latest data, in Ukraine today there are more than 150 people infected with coronavirus. Thus, according to estimates by the head of the National Expert Group on Infection Control, the minimum number of cases has exceeded 30 thousand people.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians are already infected, says epidemiologist