President Milanović: There is no synergy between public and private healthcare because it is the interest of private healthcare to perform and charge for the service
“Oncology is hard work both mentally and physically. The private sector in medicine is welcome, I have nothing against it, however one has to know where it belongs. It is interesting that private healthcare does not deal with oncology – especially prevention, and not even post-treatment. That’s for the public sector. And that’s how it will remain. Let it be so, but we should be aware that the essence of the Croatian healthcare system and the protection of people – is the role of the state”, the President of the Republic Zoran Milanović stated today at the opening of the regional conference “Cancer Patients’ Voice”, which is being held under his auspices.
In his address, President Milanović underlined that the healthcare system is one of the segments of human life in which the role of the state is welcome. “We have a system that needs to be upgraded and, in my opinion, is conceptually the only thing to strive for. And I would not agree with a high Croatian official, not Minister Beroš, who during a visit to an eminent private healthcare institution said that it is synergy between private and public healthcare. If we understand what synergy is, there is no synergy here, it is the interest of private healthcare to perform and charge for the service. The state should strive to ensure that private healthcare does not have greater capacities than the state, because this is incomprehensible and unjustified. There cannot be a state of the art medical system that private healthcare has and that ‘Rebro’ or the University Hospital Centre Split doesn’t have. This seems like favouritism. And that’s not how it should be”, President Milanović noted, adding that our healthcare system has not been chosen by chance and that “it depends only on us how long it will perform and what quality it will be”.
Furthermore, he said that cancer patients are a particularly threatened group of people, and he thanked the participants of the conference for everything they are doing and called on them, as people who understand the problem, to further fight as a legitimate group for democratic pressure. The conference “Cancer Patients’ Voice” was organized by the Association of Women Suffering from and Treated for Cancer
‘Sve za nju’, Europa Donna from Slovenia, the Association of Patients from Serbia and the School of Medicine in Zagreb – School of Public Health ‘Andrija Štampar’.
At the conference “Cancer Patients’ Voice”, representatives of twenty-five associations of patients, together with the host and regional experts and politicians, representatives of the healthcare administration, industry and all interested parties will discuss how to improve the status of cancer patients and patients in general in the healthcare system.
Speaking at the opening of the conference besides President Milanović were the Executive Director of the European Cancer Organization Mike Morrissay, the Head of the European Commission Representation in Croatia Zrinka Ujević and the Adviser to the Minister of Health Maja Cvetojević.
Alongside President Milanović was the Head of the Cabinet of the President Bartol Šimunić and the Adviser to the President for Education Jadranka Žarković.
PHOTO: Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia / Filip Glas