Prime Minister Edi Rama’s speech to the heads of departments of the “Mother Teresa” University Hospital Center:

Preparing for this address, which is also public, because there is no way it could be otherwise, in a very dark moment created for the entire community of white shirts by the coming to light of the criminal activity of some individuals among you in the Oncology Hospital, they reminded me of the words of one of the heroes of Albanian health sector, Professor Besim Elez, the day we were together at the opening of the ultramodern hospital of Internal Diseases. “Not even in our dreams could we have seen a hospital with these conditions and this hospital has nothing less than the best hospitals in Europe”.

Besim Elezi and his brothers and sisters of his generation gave life to the health sector, in the most minimal conditions, in a hospital that had no more than the tools of the hospital of the Middle Ages in France or elsewhere in the few developed centers of Europe at that time. In this territory here, almost everything that we have today was missing, but the dedication of the doctor.

While today there is almost nothing missing, but unfortunately not always the dedication of the doctor are up to the mission that starts with the Hippocratic Oath. Not respecting the duties of your profession is a very big problem for a person when the fate of his health is connected with the doctor, but to use the most symbolic and noble uniform of society, just like the masks of predators of banks, to extract money from the sick is a crime, not just against them, but against all humanity.

The time of heroes like Besim Elezi has given way to another time, just as it gives fast legs to the power of development, also gives new wings to its vices, making the individual much more aware of their rights but usually insensitive to obligations, and while in this last decade the government has done for the work conditions of health professionals, more than what has been done in many decades put together, unfortunately it cannot be said that the ranks of health professionals have been cleared of tyrants.

Looking today for heroes like Besim Elezi or his colleagues, they were the heroes of the time when Albania faced the pandemic, some of whom were your colleagues here in this hospital center and died in the line of duty, the number of Albanians who died in the clutches of that invisible enemy would have been far greater, but if you remember, even in at that time of panic for the whole world, it was enough to expose a nurse who asked for money from the relatives of the patients stuck in the Sanatorium, to touch the most delicate nerve of the entire society and igniting a feeling of revolt against the entire medical community.

Understandable in its pain, even the cry for shooting that appeared on social networks, despite the fact that, thank God, we no longer live in the time of shootings, it is normal that in this completely human pain for the victims of that monstrous abuse and the repeated request in the comments for the resignation of the Minister of Health. It is a crime in itself, supported daily by the media sewage pumps, but what belongs to me and what belongs to all those who are here and a large part, according to the degree of responsibility and that have an institutional role to play in the smooth running of the work of the health service and in the progress of reforms and measures for the transformation of the health system is the systemic addressing of known problems that have been addressed and continue to be addressed, step by step, affecting the increase of individual responsibility and the collective consciousness of the white shirts in the public sector, where the rights that you never hesitate to ask for, go together with the obligations.

Justice has once again done its job and that is the only good thing about the shocking evil that has come to light with that terrible ugliness, for which I congratulate the prosecutors and call on the judges not to allow the banalization of that criminal activity.

The changes proposed by the working group at the Ministry of Health, set up immediately after we became aware of the activities of the malicious group at Oncology, are the right steps in the right direction. The story of heads of departments and heads of hospitals who also serve the public system and own property or work in the private system is a story the origin of which we know very well. It comes from the very history of the transition from a centralized health system of the past to a health system that entered capitalism and from the lack of any capacity to build a system of hospital autonomy that guarantees all professionals to be rewarded based on their performance.

We will soon engage a group of foreign managers of public hospital structures, to closely assist the heads of the hospitals of this center, in order to guarantee the opening of the long-awaited chapter of hospital autonomy that this center must have to reward professionals by merit. I am here today also to say that the criminal activity of that group of miscreants, can never throw down our unwavering, unstoppable effort to transform the health system from the dilapidated building where we found it, into a system of functional services.

Today we have a functional university hospital center, which has still a number of gaps to fill and there are undoubtedly still big and small problems to solve, but it is not my purpose today to focus on the massive intervention of the last 10 years to transform this center, but to recall the times when medical devices and equipment were almost completely absent; when the drugs did not arrive at the doorstep of the pharmacy; when this hospital was completely occupied by a wholesale market in all the spaces between the buildings and the internal environments looked like those old stations where people waited for the train in the dirt. We need this retrospection to understand that all the colossal work of this decade, thanks to the investment and taxes of the Albanians for their health, requires from you and from no one else, through this center, a decent service in every component of it.

A total of 100 million euros have been invested here in these years and today your wages are much higher than they were, while your working conditions are incomparably better.

Today you have a new internal medicine hospital built from the ground up with 345 beds, with a staff of 612 doctors, nurses, technicians, coordinators, with new equipment for 14 clinical services; as a multipurpose emergency service. In the new Frederik Shiroka surgical hospital with 120 beds, seven operating rooms, dedicated resuscitation, 30 thousand patients have been served and the length of stay has been reduced by two times. New instruments, sterilization, disposable dressings, sterilization of operating rooms at the end of each day, are all innovations that have significantly reduced hospital infections, made your professional life much more meaningful, shortened the time of operations, improved surgical treatments without question and have increased the number of interventions to 25 thousand per year. The new pediatric hospital with a new pediatric emergency, with pediatric resuscitation with structures according to age, with an operating block, with three rooms, quality environments before and after the operation have provided 130 thousand services for small patients. The ambulatory consultation center with optimal conditions for receiving and treating patients as dignified as possible, with an online and telephone booking system for scheduling that significantly facilitates access to the ambulatory service.

The new infectious hospital with 118 beds, twice the capacity of Reanimation and emergency service.

The new general pediatric hospital with 120 beds that is nearing completion to guarantee quality services for all the components it covers.

The construction of the 60-bed day hospital is being completed, with a new facility for hemodialysis, toxicology, hematology and other diseases treated on an outpatient basis.

The construction of the Cardiology Hospital with a capacity of 80 beds, 3 operating rooms, where 2,000 interventions are expected to be performed per year, will be completed.

Those patients, together with all the Albanians who pay taxes have made your salaries much better than yesterday and tomorrow they will be better than today. Whoever forgets this and wears a white blouse commits a great sin when he does not have the patience to act as a servant to those who occupy the hospital bed of this center out of poverty, as a servant.

There are a number of units in this hospital that have made a much more significant volume than a few years ago, but 2000 patients served in the cerebrovascular emergency treatment unit in 24 hours and 7 days. Another 2600 patients covered with the whole range of oncological diseases in the radiotherapy unit and then thousands and thousands more according to all the separate tasks do not make news, do not make news, but are here daily. It is your everyday, when those who are healed thank you and go home, but these things do not make the news, it is but a daily task.

The total budget for drugs to treat tumor diseases, which are the most expensive to treat, has tripled to 30 million euros per year and has made it possible to expand the treatment protocol for oncological diseases. Before entering here, one of the professors reminded me of Herceptin. He remembered where I had told the story of Herceptin in Mirdita, reminding me: “we all laughed and thought that it was a waste to introduce Herceptin, because Herceptin is very expensive”, and Herceptin is now present, but I repeat, is there a greater injustice to all of you than the greed of a handful of individuals like those who stained all your shirts? You are seen today not as a servant who should be honored, according to me, but as a whole category suspected by people hurt in spirit by the criminal behavior of those individuals. Of course their responsibility is individual, they have to carry it to the end before the law and before God, but your responsibility as you run the structures and substructures in this hospital complex is to react, to watch, to take special care of the daily operation.

120,000 patients have been served in this center, on average per year, examinations have increased by 50% and days of hospital stay have decreased by 50%. These are things that make you want to scream when you see animals like them telling the world what they have been up to and how they understand the mission or how they do not understand the mission.

350 thousand outpatient services, 365 days a year. 350 thousand outpatient services have been done in QSUT from 100 thousand that were done before, with those conditions that were done amid the chaos and among all the screaming deficiencies that you know better than I until the previous decade.

Today QSUT has an ultra-modern analysis laboratory with a great range. This is the work of the government with the money of the Albanians. But the government does not work in hospital wards. The Ministry does not come here to put on a shirt and tell you how to treat people, we cannot do that, no one else can do it except you and your service teams and it’s you and nobody else that define the level of quality of services not just from a professional point of view, but from a human point of view.

Since I mentioned Professor Besim Elez several times, I want to return to him and those others who are also your idols whose most extraordinary weapon was empathy.

In closing, during this decade salaries have doubled and if today over 3000 employees of QSUT have a much better salary and specialist doctors receive 140% more, again please, please do not forget for a moment that money comes from those who come here to receive a service, it is their money that pays your salaries. Just as it is their money that pays for all the investments, it is their money that pays for all that we have done and will continue to do to increase the capacities of the staff.

Today it may seem completely out of context, but I have a lot of faith in the professional strength of this troupe. Where my faith begins to waver is the moral power of this body and the capacity to make an extra effort as a general spirit, not just as the individual capacity of a part, but as a general spirit, to normalize empathy, to normalize good communication.

I think that what happened should not have happened, but I have faith, especially in those who have much to give from the experience of their younger ones professionally, but I have a lot of faith in the younger ones to build a culture of empathy. It costs nothing, at all. This hospital is called Mother Teresa! Of course, I am not asking you to become like her, but I am asking you to remember that this hospital is named after Mother Teresa for a reason, and remember that whatever you give of your soul here it will be a great investment for this country of your children.

Thank you to all of you and to all the doctors who do not belong to that cancer called corruption and which has its own tumors in the health system.

I have one last thing! I got the impression that it was a coincidence that also came as a message. I received a message from a girl who had her mother in Oncology and graduated in molecular biology, master of science, and she wrote to me that, “I have all the desire and will to join the team of Oncology if the opportunity arises.”. Inesa, please greet everyone who needs to see some positivity.

Inesa also has remarks about how the work should be done better, but it really seemed to me like an oxygen bubble in a moment without oxygen for this Oncology situation and I am sure you will expect her in your staff, you will integrate her and I am very confident that her presence will make you more empathetic, not only with the patients, but with each other in the first place.