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14 04 2007 The debate examined the recent sacking of the general secretary of the health ministry and the recruitment of a replacement, to highlight the problems facing the health service.
Since 1999, when the Kosovo war ended and the UN administration was set up in the territory, health institutions have been neglected and there has been a lack of adequate medical care.
The ministry of health has been accused of mismanaging its budget and decision makers have also faced criticism.
The
debate looked at the health crisis and in particular the role of the
general secretary, with the panel including key people in the sector.
Numan Balic, a former minister of health; Pleurat Sejdiu, former
secretary of ministry of health; Fetije Kepuska, former head of the
parliamentary commission for health; Mefail Bajqinovci, author of
Pulsi, a popular TV show on health; and Alban Selimi, a journalist with
the LAJM daily newspaper
Balic and Sejdiu publicly accused each other
of corruption and mismanagment several times when they were in office. Sejdiu
said he didn't have a clue why so many people were interested in his
old job. According to him, it's not a very important or attractive job.
Kepuska
disagreed. "People envy Sejdiu's achievements and that is the main
reason why people are interested in the post," she said.
Bajqinovci
said the post was important because it carries a lot of competences,
especially when it comes to tenders and decisions about money.
Bajqinovci
and Balic had a lively debate about why Balic left his post as minister
of health. Bajqinovci said it was because of the power the secretary
had over him.
During the debate, BIRN played interviews
with the three potential candidates for the secretary post. They were
asked how they plan to make changes in the health system, how they will
they resist political and economical pressure and what will be their
priorities in this job?
Asked if the post is attractive
due to the influence that it has in the licensing of pharmacies or
because of the size of the contracts it deals with, Sejdiu claimed
that this has had nothing to do with it.
According to
Sejdiu "no one can make a lot of changes in this post... the secretary
only carries out the decisions that the government makes".
The
journalists in the debate confronted the panelists with lots of facts
about corruption cases in the health sector over the last three years.
Bajqinovci accused Sejdiu for mismanaging public funds in the ministry while he was a secretary.
"You have provided the clinics with medicaments at a very high price," he said.
Sejdiu
defended himself by saying that the prices were high due to "the high
quality of the drugs", and added that "it has nothing to do with
mismanagement".
At the beginning of 2010 BIRN network published Digging Deeper - A Guide for Investigative Journalists in the Balkans, written in cooperation with Sheila Coronel, Director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism and professor of professional practice at Columbia University, New York.
