Emergency heart intervention abroad/ the 20-year-old's file 'sleeps' in the drawers of the Ministry of Health

2023-10-04 21:00:00, Denoncim CNA

Emergency heart intervention abroad/ the 20-year-old's file

A 20-year-old woman has turned to Fiks Fare for a heart intervention that needs to be performed urgently, but her file has been kept in the drawers of the Ministry of Health for months.

Its intervention is done only outside Albania, as it is not performed in our hospitals, while in private hospitals sometimes the doctor is missing and sometimes the equipment is missing. In the meantime, the Ministry of Health does not carry out the announcements that the interested party must appear at the Ministry, be interested often and complete the relevant documentation.

20-year-old Ornela Palaj turned to Fiksi as she and her family could not find a solution. “I have to have an intervention called X-ray burn ABLATION to burn the hole that was created for me. I was born with it, but I found out too late," she says. She often had heart palpitations at school, work, on the street, wherever she was, and it became bad.

"I was at work when I realized what I have. For 2-3 hours, my heart rate was 200-220 and I ended up in the emergency department of the Health and Medical Center", says the 20-year-old. He was given first aid in the emergency room and there the doctor recognized what he was suffering from. After 7 hours in the emergency room, the doctor recommends a private clinic, since the intervention that Ornela needed was not done in the country, or abroad. But the options for the family were not to send the girl abroad for treatment. Although they had tried with the private clinic, they had not found a solution. The operation costs somewhere around 5000-6000 euros, which the family does not have. But in order to be sure of the diagnosis, the 20-year-old says that she also performed a diagnosis in Italy where they confirmed the same thing, but that there was an urgent need for the intervention to be performed."I asked how much it cost and they told me 9,000, 10,000 euros ," she says.

Fiksi goes to the Directorate of QSUT to get some information. In the meeting with the director Mrs. Albana Fico, who was informed by Fiksi about the situation of the girl, she showed and said that she will deal with the case personally not only as a director but as a doctor.

Emergency heart intervention abroad/ the 20-year-old's file

In a response from the QSUT Directorate, it was explained that cardiac ablation is not performed at the QSUT, it is indicated only in some arrhythmias that re-recur. For those patients who have an essential need for this procedure, they are admitted and discharged to the interhospital committee.

And that's how it happened, the girl was admitted to the cardiology ward near QSUT, where after 5 days after all the checks and procedures were performed, the girl's case received a referral for an inter-hospital commission. The commission met and made a recommendation to the ministry that the girl be operated abroad at the expense of the state. This commission took place at the end of June, but since that day the 20-year-old woman did not receive any notification from the ministry.

Emergency heart intervention abroad/ the 20-year-old's file

Three months of waiting passed and so Fiksi and her daughter were interested in the Ministry of Health. Information at the Ministry is informed that the request from QSUT has gone, but the large flow of over 300 interested parties is the reason that they have not been notified by this institution. Even the information worker at the ministry claims that the patients themselves should be interested in getting the confirmation and start completing the file with the relevant documentation. After the documentation is submitted, the patient, specifically the 20-year-old woman, must wait from two weeks to three months if a Turkish hospital can take her over as a case.

So even though the intervention of the 20-year-old was an emergency, another 3 months must pass for an answer as to whether or not her intervention will be carried out in Turkey./ tch

Emergency heart intervention abroad/ the 20-year-old's file