The migration of Macedonia’s educated and skilled workforce has not abated despite the change in Government. If during the past two decades there was small but steady migration, since 2018 onward the pace has significantly increased to a point even company executives with significant salaries (x 8 the national average) are leaving the country with their families. And every industry has been feeling it. There are no waiters, no construction workers, hospitals are missing hundreds of doctors, thousands of nurses who have left for the EU, there is a running joke in the country that only the bandits, politicians and those working remotely have remained in the country.
A recent report by the State Audit Office (SAO) found that due to lack of professional skilled staff, it has limited the functionality and utilization of modern medical equipment worth nearly 19 million euros! The Office also concluded that in the period analyzed (2021-2023), the set strategic goals were partially realized, and the procurement of new modern medical equipment for public health institutions (PHI), either with budget funds or through projects, was not always carried out on the basis of criteria for determining priorities for needs, nor was adequate analysis and coordination of space conditions, accompanying equipment and professional and trained staff to work with them carried out. What the SAO is essentially saying is the hospitals and the Ministry of Health are run by incompetents who neither have the ability to create proper plans nor do they have the skilled people to use or manage the equipment that eventually gets purchased.
The audit covered the most expensive purchased modern medical equipment and equipment for which there is the greatest interest in the services it offers, such as computer tomography (CT Scans), angiographs, accelerators, mammography with tomosynthesis and stereotaxy, positron emission tomography combined with computed tomography (PET/CT) and a robotic rehabilitation device. There are no competent people to use these technology, in the entire country! As a result, when the existing equipment needs to be repaired, there is a general wait of six months to two years to find a company who can fix the equipment because the Macedonian company is charging a maintenance fee almost as much as the actual value of the equipment itself. To quote the SAO office: “Due to the monopoly position of authorized representatives for maintenance and servicing for a period of three years for some of the equipment, the costs are equivalent to the value of new equipment of the same type, as is the case with accelerators. Some of the CT devices and angiographs, purchased more than 10 years ago, often break down and are not in operation for months, even years,” the auditors determined. Meanwhile cancer patients who have paid into the Macedonian health system for decades in some cases end up going to the neighboring countries for a scan.
The new government who still thinks is in the opposition, will need years, if not decades to fix this utterly broken system which is probably why they hardly seem to be trying. Meanwhile, people are leaving in droves…
