Toxicology Clinic Doctor Andon Chibishev, who is also the Clinic’s former director, after the fire in the Tetovo modular hospital in 2021 said in a TV interview that instead of modular hospitals, a better option for caring for patients with Covid-19 was the infectious diseases department and internal medicine wards.
“We have a plethora of non-functional health facilities or dilapidated ones left to the ravages of time that could, with a little money and a little organization, be adapted and used in the context of the situation we are in. These are facilities built to all standards, they just need to be adapted,” said Doctor Chibishev at the time in an interview with Alfa TV broadcast on September 11, 2021.
According to Chibishev, the modular hospitals were not facilities in which intensive medical care could be provided. Modular hospitals, he says, were filled to the last capacity, and more beds were added in instead and more patients were accommodated than space allowed.
“Why did we, as a country, as a health system, rely on modular hospitals? We have certain capacities in infectious diseases departments, in internal medicine departments, where we could hospitalize such patients who need intensive medical care. I repeat, intensive medical care, which is usually also associated with oxygen therapy or giving oxygen to patients. I believe that modular hospitals are not capacities in which intensive medical care can be provided,” said Chibishev.
Between the waves, when there was a certain calming of the epidemiological situation, according to Chibishev, the authorities should have thought about how to increase the infrastructure capacities and increase the professional staff, because there were not enough infectious diseases specialists and people who were qualified to treat serious patients placed on a respiratory machine.
“Managing a patient on a respiratory machine is a whole science. We could have sent young doctors to an intensive course, at least to educate them, to train them to manage patients. I think that would have made the situation much better and we would have had much less damage and fewer lives lost,” said Dr. Chibishev.
Attorney and former prosecutor Lejla Kadriu, in a recent interview with Alfa TV, talking about the fire in the Tetovo modular hospital, said that materials were saved during the construction of the modular hospitals, although funds were provided for them by the World Bank.
Kadriu, who was then called as a public prosecutor to the scene of the fire, says that research has shown that panels with foam, which cost five to six euros, were used during the construction of the modular hospitals, instead of panels with stone wool, which does not burn for up to 40 minutes.
A fire broke out in the modular hospital in Tetovo on the night of September 8, 2021, in which 14 people lost their lives. At the time, this was one of the major tragedies in the country.
