I have firmly decided that in 2019, the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) will devote more time to social issues. There is even more corruption in this sector than in others, and its consequences are more disgusting and more dangerous than anywhere else.
We are ready to make our media resources available to organizations working in this field—and we have quite substantial ones. First and foremost, to the few independent trade unions that continue to work honestly when everyone around them has sold out.
Last year, we began this kind of cooperation with the healthcare workers’ union Doctors’ Alliance. They’re great, and the first video on my blog in 2019 comes from them.
Take a look: this is an inspection of a Moscow outpatient clinic in Moscow’s Babushkinsky District.
Moscow’s healthcare budget is 444.5 billion rubles. And yet even Moscow’s medical institutions are living like something out of stories about the “cursed ’90s” (the turbulent post-Soviet 1990s).
Doctors’ seniority bonuses have been cut. There is no ventilation in the X-ray rooms, there has been no infectious disease specialist at the clinic for more than 10 years, and those duties are being carried out by a nurse whose salary they are constantly trying to reduce.
The doctors at Clinic No. 218 had had enough, and they did what all honest medical workers should do in a situation like this: they turned to the Doctors’ Alliance.
Interestingly, on the day of the raid—January 16—the clinic was supposed to hold a meeting to which the chief physician had invited those who were dissatisfied. But when management realized that union representatives had arrived, they simply ran away.
Public attention and noise are excellent tools for solving problems like these. The history of victories of the Doctors’ Alliance confirms this perfectly.