In Mykolaiv, more than 50 employees of two maternity hospitals will be laid off — the health care department

In connection with the reorganization of the Mykolaiv maternity hospitals No. 1 and No. 2, 57 employees of medical institutions will lose their jobs.

«NikVesti» was informed about this in the Mykolayiv City Council's health care department in response to an information request.

We will remind you that on July 31, the Mykolaiv City Council made a decision to reorganize maternity homes No. 1 and No. 2 — they were attached to City Hospital No. 1 and City Hospital No. 3, respectively.

As it is known, the employees of institutions starting with management and doctors, ending with support workers, drivers and cooks fall under the reduction. So, out of 57 physical persons, the number of doctors who will be released due to the reorganization of two maternity hospitals is 7 real specialists.

In total, as is known, 170.75 staff units will be reduced, of which 110.75 are in maternity hospital No. 2. Accordingly, the staff of maternity hospital No. 1 will be reduced by a total of 60 units.

Previously, «NikVesti» wrote that 42 workers were laid off in maternity hospital No. 2 alone. Taking into account that the total number of laid-off individuals in two medical institutions is 57, 15 specialists are going to be laid off in maternity hospital No. 1.

It is worth noting that the team of the maternity hospital No. 2 in Mykolaiv considers the decision of the city authorities to actually liquidate and preserve only one specialized medical facility in the city to be erroneous.

The head of the city's health care department, Iryna Shamrai, explaining the need to reorganize medical facilities, stated that over the past 7 years, the number of pregnant women in Mykolaiv has decreased 5 times.

The city authorities plan to keep one maternity hospital in the city for almost half a million residents — No. 3, which is located in the Lisky microdistrict in the Factory district of Mykolaiv.

We will remind you that in January 2022, a blogger from Mykolaiv spoke about the cost of «free» childbirth in maternity hospital No. 3: 10 thousand hryvnias for a cesarean section, 8 thousand hryvnias for a natural birth. The cost of a regular ward was also mentioned — 580 hryvnias per day, but there is also one for 2,500 hryvnias per day at prices as of the beginning of 2022.

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It should be noted that the state also guarantees free childbirth in Ukraine. In December 2021, Minister of Health Viktor Liashko announced that the National Health Service of Ukraine would compensate for one birth 15,101 hryvnias under the medical guarantee program. According to the E-Health system, the Mykolaiv Maternity Hospital No. 3 received 43 million 125 thousand 99 hryvnias under this program in 2021.

Reduction of doctors

However, these two cases are not the only ones in the medical field of Mykolaiv Oblast. As early as March 31, 2023, the editorial office of «NikVesti» received and published a copy of the order of the chief doctor of the emergency medical hospital, Oleksandr Demianov, on the reduction of the number of employees. According to him, this decision is due to underfunding: this year the hospital received only 91 million hryvnias from the National Health Service, while last year it received 128 million hryvnias.

In response to this publication, officials began to declare en masse that this decision will not affect working doctors, as it only applies to vacancies. At the same time, the health care department assured that the reduction will not affect the quality of service, and the military governor explained this by reforms in medicine.

However, «NikVesti» conducted its own investigation and found out that such assurances turned out to be false. It turned out that the hospital staff faced a choice: reduce the number of doctors or reduce wages. Thus, the medical staff of the hospital, which treated severely wounded people around the clock in the first months of the war, had to agree to a 25% cut in wages. This reduction creates a number of problems, in particular, 6 neurosurgeons out of 12 are left to work in neurosurgery. At the same time, not all of them have the right to operate independently.

However, in April it became known that the orders for the transfer of surgeons to 0.75 rates were canceled in the Mykolaiv Emergency Hospital.