Uga Dumpis, Latvia’s chief infectious disease specialist, appeared on TV3 to say that nothing much has been done since the Covid-19 pandemic to prepare the country’s medical system for other crises. Strategic mistakes, he said, relate to a failure to deal with basic issues such as the infrastructure of university hospitals – something that is crucial in the field of crisis management.
Professor Dumpis is an infectious disease specialist at the Pauls Stradins Clinical University Hospital, and asked whether the medical system is prepared for another viral pandemic, he said not really.
The professor noted that there has been a standstill in critical construction, which means that university hospitals have not been able to build absolutely necessary infrastructure such as an admissions ward at the Stradins Hospital or resuscitation wards with European financing.
“We are standing still,” Dumpis declares. “At the very least, we have missed all the deadlines.” The specialists recalled that one of the big conclusions from the Covid-19 era was that infrastructure is crucial when it comes to crisis management.
University hospitals bore the brunt during the pandemic, Dumpis reminds us: “Five years have passed, and we are still standing still. Doctors are not to blame for a failure to build buildings and spend European money. This is a strategic mistake in that we still cannot deal with even elementary issues. This is not a railway project worth billions. We’re talking about just a few buildings here.”
Construction of the Stradins Hospital’s Emergency Medical Centre has been ongoing since the 1970s, and the ward often handles two times more patients than it can accommodate. “This, of course, is a risk,” Dumpis says. “It’s not a full tram where you travel for two stops. It’s a place where sick people spend several hours or even days.” The specialist pointed out that this, of course, puts other patients at risk.
Dumpis went on to say that the sector’s information systems are ridiculously out of date and that Latvia is probably 20 years behind Estonia in this respect.
Asked whether something should have been done different during the pandemic, Professor Dumpis insisted that the only big mistake came in autumn 2021, when restrictions were not put in place at a time when vaccines were available, but many senior citizens were not yet vaccinated. The result was a seriously overburdened health care system, with many seniors passing away.
Responsibility for this rests with politicians, Dumpis insists. “There were lots of political discussions, but the restrictions were introduced two weeks too late,” he says.
International experience also shoed that countries with strong healthcare systems dealt with the situation best, Dumpis added.
The specialist also stressed that of crucial importance are crisis communications and trust in the authorities. Comparatively few people understood the huge importance of vaccines, without which we would have had to live under serious restrictions for many more years.
Source: BNS
(Reproduction of BNS information in mass media and other websites without written consent of BNS is prohibited.)