YOUNG MOTHERS REQUIRE MoH TO TAKE MEASURES WHILE DEALING WITH FALSE DIAGNOSES ON CHILDREN

A group of young mothers require the Ministry of Health, Labor and Social Protection to take measures to combat harmful practices, when doctors intentionally make more serious diagnosis for children, prescribe antibiotics unnecessarily, thus demanding additional funding.

On Monday, several dozen of young mothers protested before the Ministry. Some of the protest participants came with t-shirts chanting “Stop false diagnoses!” others came with posters “Want to live healthy! Want to live well”.

One of the protest organizers, founder of the online community for moms Ask a Mom, Alicia Valcov said that parents are dissatisfied with the results of the internal investigation carried out by the Ministry. According to her, doctors prescribe antibiotics to children before receiving tests’ results; moreover, they do not inform parents about the diagnosis and treatment mode applied to the child.
Valcov also reported that the initiative group of parents filed a petition signed by about 4 thousand people, demanding to stop false diagnosis and prescription of antibiotics to children.

Ministry State Secretary Rodica Skutelnic announced that the parties came to an understanding.

“One of the problems raised by the parents is ineffective communication between doctors and parents. We offered the young mothers group to delegate their representatives, who will be included in a special working group on the revision of national clinical protocols to improve communication standards between parents, patients and doctors”, she said.

The State Secretary also noted that the Ministry is revising the policy of antibiotics and invited mothers to be observers in this process.

“We also agreed that mothers will present specific cases to the Ministry (determination of an obviously false diagnosis). After checking these cases, we will present concrete results”, she promised.

Earlier, the Ministry denied the statements made by pediatrician Mihai Stratulat that children in Chisinau hospitals are falsely diagnosed for the sake of additional funding. According to the Ministry, a special commission had checked the hospital records for 2016-2018 and found neither violations nor the facts of unreasonable hospitalization and antibiotic treatment.