Not all of the health services are available for the citizens at all of the wards at the clinics and hospitals in North Macedonia, but very soon every ward will resume work and all services will become available, said the Health Minister Venko Filipche for Meta.mk.
At the moment, not all types of operations are performed in the clinics. At Skopje City Hospital “8 Septemvri” (8th of September), everything is ready and waiting for the Surgery ward to resume work, but they are waiting for anesthesiologists to arrive. The primary health ward had no obstacles regarding diagnostics and specialist examinations.
Prof. Dr. Nino Vasev, Director at the Oncology Clinic, told Meta.mk that during the crisis period, the clinic worked non-stop.
“All types of the scheduled chemotherapy and radiography were conducted. Since mid-May, the check-ups have returned and we are regularly performing all examinations as if we are working under normal conditions. The oncology wards have been functioning all over the world. COVID-19 is not more dangerous than cancer,” Vasev says.
Dr. Hristijan Kostov, the Director of the SCH “8th of September”, which in the past four and a half months, also served as a COVID-19 center, said that there is a plan for returning to normail work.
“We plan to start with surgeries at least three times a day with patients with malign diseases. We have a problem with the lack of anesthesiologists. We don’t have enough of them. We have two doctors who had tested positive and later tested negative, but they are not enough. If we are assigned two more, we could start with operations,” Kostov says.
In the primary health system, the services have been available since the start of the crisis. Prof. Dr. Viktor Isjanovski, the director of the Center for Public Health – Skopje, said that providing health services hasn’t stopped since the start of the crisis.
