According to unofficial information from Ukrainian media, the former Deputy Healthcare Minister of Ukraine, Mykhaylo Zagriychuk, is a suspect for meddling (intervening) with the Single State Transplantation Information System, or more precisely, for manipulating the list of the automatic pairing system – organ donor and recipient, writes Truthmeter.mk.
Under the content-sharing agreement between Truthmeter.mk and Meta.mk, we republish the text in full below:
We are fact-checking a post on the social network Facebook claiming the following:
Long live servants of satanists from satanic NATO and pedophile EU.
The post shares a photograph and claims that ”the former Healthcare Minister of Ukraine, Mykhaylo Zagriychuk was detained for selling organs”. It also adds that ”together with 10 other doctors, he was arrested under the suspicion of illegally extracting and exporting human organs abroad”. In addition, it claims that ”having left the managerial post in the Healthcare Ministry, Zagriychuk became Head of the Unit for Transplantation and Digestive Surgery within the Heart Institute”, and ”that the other 10 of his peer doctors were specialists from the Regional Clinical Hospital Volynska and from the Central City Clinical Hospital in Kyiv”.
The post is sharing a photograph of President Gordana Siljanovska Davkova, who is called a “servant”, while next to her are the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, from the Ukraine Restructure Conference in Berlin. By presenting the President as a “servant”, an attempt is being made to discredit North Macedonia and its institutions (the institution of the President), as though it were “enslaved” despite the fact that the country is independent and sovereign and has its power separation into the legislative, executive and judicial branch.
In addition, there is absolutely no initiative in the European Union to legalize pedophilia, which is a criminal act. The Directive on Combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography is just one document that supports the EU’s determination to fight pedophilia. To that end, NATO is not a satanic organization but represents a defense alliance that aims to protect its member states from external threats.
Truthmeter has already debunked a false claim about “satanic NATO and pedophile EU”, which is a frequent mantra of Russian propaganda in both, the region and the country. It is impossible not to realize that the Kremlin is using the phrases to describe the West and NATO as “satanic” in an attempt to justify its bloody unprovoked invasion of sovereign and democratic Ukraine.
Regarding the part of the post referring to the former Deputy Healthcare Minister of Ukraine, Mykhaylo Zagriychuk, the information spread by Ukrainian media comes from unofficial sources, and does not relate to suspicions of “exporting human organs abroad”.
In addition, the surgeon and former Deputy Healthcare Minister is free and performing surgery, as can be seen from the activities he shares on Facebook.
He states for a Ukrainian medium that he was under suspicion, but not arrested. He is suspected of meddling (or intervening) with Ukraine’s Single State Transplantation Information System.
As reported by the medium Suspilne, 11 doctors from different hospitals who took part in a pilot project for organ transplantation are suspected of participating in a criminal organization (Paragraph 1.2, Article 255 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), violating the procedure for transplantation of human anatomy materials (Paragraph 5 of Article 143 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) and for unauthorized handling information processed electronically (Paragraph 3, Article 362 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
They have been suspected of “meddling with the Single Transplantation Information System” that is automatic. Based on various medical criteria, the system automatically selects the donor and the recipient who can receive the organ (matching the appropriate donor with the appropriate patient) and automatically decides who can be saved with a donor organ. Unofficially, Ukrainian media, citing unnamed sources or “medical circles” are saying that in some hospitals the selection of a donor and organ recipient could have been done manually, by manipulating the list of patients and donors, not by the computer as it should have been. In some hospitals, the donor-patient lists could be entered manually.
The selection of the donor and recipient takes place in different hospitals to avoid manipulating the donor-patient list. Nevertheless, according to the sources of Suspilni from the medical community, some hospitals participating in the pilot organ transplantation project could adjust manually the donor-patient list because they had access to the system, elaborated the medium Suspilni.
At the moment, an investigation has been initiated in compliance with Article 255, Paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and Article 143, Paragraph 5 of the Criminal Code – Abuse of the procedure for transplantation of human anatomy materials, creating a criminal group and participating therein, and unauthorized actions with the computer system by an authorized person. All information is unofficial and Ukrainian media are quoting anonymous sources. Officially, the institutions have not announced the start of an investigation.
The investigation concerning the “meddling with the Single State Transplantation Information System” was also confirmed by Mykhailo Radutskyi, President of the Committee of National Healthcare, Medical Assistance and Insurance. According to him, transplantation was not performed due to the suspicions that doctors were meddling with the Single State Transplantation Information System. He stated that no transplantations were performed in the country for over 10 days because the doctors responsible for declaring brain death were afraid.
A meeting took place in the Ministry of Healthcare last Saturday. All managers of the transplantation centres in Ukraine were present. I was also there, the Minister was there and he assigned a task to proceed with the transplantation in any case, stated Radutskyi.
He has his version of how the meddling with the system could have been done which is unofficial and still just his theory.
This is not the official version of the investigation, but I think that could be the case. There is a queue – the first, second, third in line that are suitable for a given organ. Nobody prohibits you to forget to inform the first in line that the organ is available. So, you will not inform them. The organ cannot live for a month or two, it will not wait. Those things are urgent. I am not saying that was the case, but that could be the case because meddling manually with the system is difficult, he stated.
Other media inform that “the line for transplantation is for sale in Ukraine“.
Which suspicions are being investigated? The Prosecution initiated criminal indictment for the following articles: violation of the procedure for transplantation of human anatomy materials, creating, managing criminal community or criminal organization and participating therein; unauthorized action with computer processed information. According to LB.ua sources familiar with the case, the suspicion is that a group of doctors was selling transplantation queues, including the transplantation coordinators who were receiving money to manipulate the queue. All that, supposedly, was done so that the Heart Institute would receive organs for transplantation: ”If you disrupt the line, it is definitely not free of charge to the person who skipped the queue”, informed Visnik.
Mykhaylo Zagriychuk is a surgeon and was the former Deputy Minister of Healthcare during Minister Zoriana Skaletska’s term. She ended her term in 2019. Currently, she is employed as Head of the Transplantation and Abdominal Surgery Department within the Heart Institute under the leadership of Boris Todurov.
None of the Ukrainian sources mention Zagriychuk as a suspect in “sales of organs abroad”. He is suspected of manipulating the list of the automatic pairing system (donors and recipients). Due to all of the above-noted facts, the fact-checked post is assessed as untrue.
