By News Room
According to the Ministry of Health of the Kyrgyz Republic, about 15-20 Kyrgyz people are diagnosed with cancer every day. But the real figure, as the National Center for Oncology and Hematology explained to the RG correspondent, is most likely higher, since many citizens, especially those in remote areas, are in no hurry to undergo an exam and drag it out until the last moment. That is why the detection of cancer in the country often occurs at advanced stages, and cancer today is one of the leading causes of death in Kyrgyzstan.
The Cabinet of Ministers hopes that the situation will improve after the approval of amendments to the law on cancer care for the population of the republic, adopted more than 20 years ago.
According to the Cabinet, public medical institutions today have a monopoly on the treatment of patients with neoplasms. As for private traders, according to the above legal act, they can only provide palliative care (medical interventions, psychological measures, care, as well as the provision of social services to patients).
“Public health care organizations play an important role in providing medical care to the population, including in the treatment of malignant neoplasms. However, their monopoly has negative consequences,” the memo of the amendments says.
First, patients have limited choices. They can receive qualified treatment only in public medical institutions. Another option is to leave the republic for countries where there are private clinics. This, as the Cabinet notes, leads to a drop in the quality of medical care provided and an increase in the waiting time for an appointment with a doctor.
Second, monopoly reduces the effectiveness of medical interventions. “Public health organizations are not always able to adapt quickly to new technologies, which slows down the development and use of modern methods of cancer treatment,” the rationale notes.
Third, public medical institutions themselves are not always interested in improving the quality of their work aimed at providing high-quality medical care to patients, including due to insufficient funding. As a result, many of them remain without proper treatment and care.
By allowing private traders to operate in this segment of the republic’s medical services market, the government hopes to address the identified problems.
Notice
Baktygul Sultangaziyeva, director of the National Center of Oncology and Hematology:
- People have been talking for more than a year about allowing private medical institutions to treat cancer patients in Kyrgyzstan. Personally, I don’t mind, because we are talking about healthy competition, which will only benefit doctors and patients. World practice shows that this is so. The patient must be able to choose who to contact. However, permission, in my view, can only be granted under certain conditions. The first is that public health facilities should retain some of the services they provide to patients. For example, they will undergo radiotherapy only with us.
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