After his approval as the new Minister of Health, New Unity politician, gastroenterologist Hosams Abu Meri plans to continue his medical practice.
Abu Meri told LETA that he is unlikely to be able to dedicate as much time to his medical practice as before. As a Saeima deputy, he was able to dedicate slightly more time to his patients.
Abu Meri has no plans to leave the medical field entirely – he has patients that have gone to him for years. This includes chronic patients.
He has taken a pause from his everyday medical practice for the budget approval procedure.
He estimates he may be able to take patients on Saturdays early in the morning or late in the evening. However, this would be limited patient acceptance time for a limited number of people.
The politician admits the medical sector has many problems. The biggest of them is the accessibility of healthcare services (long queues, quotas and shortage of medical specialists).
“We are talking 1 500 missing workers, which affects the patient queues. I travel outside of Riga and I can see the queue I have in Jelgava a month in advance, because there’s no one who can work. In Riga, on the other hand, there are plenty of people who can work but no quotas to fill. This is a serious issue that needs to be resolved, but it cannot be done in a single day or month. If we’re saying today, then you can expect results in five years,” said Abu Meri.
He also says wages play a major role in all this. He stressed that nurses want normal wages too. This is why it is important to make sure they are able to work, feel well and able to admit patients.
Other important topic is the price of medicines, digitisation, as well as new compensated and innovative medicines that may provide a better and faster effect in specific situations (cancer patients, for example). According to Abu Meri, it is also important to make sure funding is spent efficiently, as well as avoid a situation when there are services available in Riga or some other place but no specialists to provide said services. He also said Latvia should think about ways to speed up provision of services to residents living close to the border.
“We need to resolve issues with e-health and digitisation, because then we will be able to see everything everywhere.
For example, perform analysis once and not thrice. This is a matter of wasting funding and not providing patients useful information about them,” admits the doctor.
He said he wants to work together with departing Minister of Health Līga Meņģelsone. She could be given a post in the Minister’s Office. He did not comment on the minister’s office in more detail.
In the morning on Friday, the 15th of September, the coalition under prime minister candidate Evika Siliņa signed the cooperation agreement and the new government’s declaration.
Representatives of New Unity, Progressive Party and Union of Greens and Farmers signed the relevant documents.
It is also reported that eight out of 16 seats in the new government will go to New Unity, five – to the Union of Greens and Farmers, and three – to the Progressive party, as confirmed by Siliņa.
According to her, aside from the Prime Minister’s seat, JV will take over the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Justice, as well as Ministry of Environment Protection and Regional Development.
The Union of Greens and Farmers will take the Saeima speaker’s post, as well as the Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Welfare and Ministry of Climate and Energy.
Progressive Party will take over the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Transport.
The new ruling coalition has 52 votes in the Saeima plus one from independent Saeima deputy, Chairman of Honour to Serve Riga Oļegs Burovs, whose party agreed on cooperation with the Union of Greens and Farmers.
Also read: Ex-Minister of Health decides to join ruling party in Latvia