Burdenko Neurosurgery Institute in Moscow. Photo courtesy of TASS and Current Time
Moscow Doctor Summoned to Prosecutor’s Office over Interview on Shortage of Protective Equipment
OVD Info
April 7, 2020
The Agora International Human Rights Group has reported on the Telegram channel Coronavirus Legal Aid Headquarters that the Tverskaya Inter-District Prosecutor’s Office has launched a probe of the Burdenko Neurosurgery Institute.
The probe was prompted by a interview, published on the website Current Time, in which Vsevolod Shurkhay, a neurosurgeon at the institute, said that doctors lacked personal protection equipment. As part of the probe, Shurkhay himself was summoned to the prosecutor’s office for questioning.
Entitled “One Mercury Thermometer for Forty People, and House Calls Without Protection: Russian Doctors Talk About Lack of Protection Against Coronavirus,” the article was published on March 24. In the interview, Shurkhay discusses the shortage of face respirators for doctors in his department and UV lamps for air purification. In addition, according to Shurkhay, doctors in the department were asked to take their own temperature and issued a single mercury thermometer for forty employees.
According to Current Time, Shurkhay sent a written request to institute management, asking them to solve the problem, but they advised him not to “escalate” the situation. It was then that the doctor contacted supervisory bodies and journalists.
According to Agora’s legal aid headquarters, on March 25, Shurkhay was asked by the institute’s head physician to give a written explanation for the Current Time article. The human rights organization writes that Shurkhay was given to understand he could be dismissed for washing the institute’s “dirty linen” in public and reproached for immediately contacting the media.
Translated by the Russian Reader. You can read all my posts about the coronavirus epidemic in Russia here.
The Russian Reader 