The Hungarian Medical Association (Magyar Orvosi Kamara/MOK) published four shocking photos on its Facebook page on Friday. Under the photos was the following brief explanation: “Covid center, resting place and bathroom for the doctors. Our colleagues persevere even under these circumstances.”
In no time, hundreds of comments appeared, beginning with a gentleman who called on the person responsible for the photos to report the case to the military commander the Orbán government placed at the head of the hospitals “because unfortunately many hospital directors are totally unfit to run their own institutions.” Of course, a lot of people attested to the generally rundown state of Hungarian hospitals, but the government also had numerous defenders who claimed that Orbán and company are not responsible for the neglected state of the facilities. A few people were even convinced that the photos “were the vile forgeries of a lunatic” or, if real, most likely were taken in Romania or Albania.
The early commenters all agreed that MOK made a mistake by not revealing the name of the hospital where these unspeakable conditions exist. At that point MOK explained its reasons for keeping the name of the hospital secret: “the wind is fierce” in the healthcare industry and “the colleagues” are afraid of their superiors. I assume the “wind” refers to the generally fearful atmosphere that exists in the sector. And those who took the photos and who “work with honor in the care of COVID patients” were afraid to be identified. So, those who took the photographs were not the patients or visitors to the hospital but the staff itself, and they must be sheltered. MOK does hope that the person who is responsible for the maintenance of the hospital will recognize the hidden corners of his own institution and will remedy the situation. MOK reassured people that the photos are genuine and disclosed that they were taken in one of the cities with “county rights.” That doesn’t tell us much because, all told, 23 cities are designated as county centers.
MOK’s explanation for its decision to keep the location of this disgusting bathroom a secret didn’t impress devoted Fidesz supporters, who look upon the new leadership of the medical association as a gathering place of “communist snitches” inherited from the Gyurcsány era. Pro-government commenters are certain that “checking of the facilities is done regularly.” In any case, who would believe that a hospital in that state would be allowed to operate? Even if such an abominable state of affairs exists, “it shouldn’t be used in the interest of sly criminals.” I guess the sly criminals are the new leaders of the Hungarian Medical Association.
One female commenter proudly announced that in the last three years she visited three hospitals both as a patient and as a visitor. In all three places, the bathrooms were in perfect order. MOK’s photos are not realistic. It must be an old bathroom that hasn’t been used for years. The bathroom pictured is a stage set that is supposed to create “a public circus.” A doctor claimed that the hospitals where he works as an attending physician have separate resting rooms with television and computers. They look like 5-star hotels.
Among the many unknown real or fictitious names in the comment section, I found one that many people are familiar with: Csaba Böjte from Transylvania, who is a great favorite of the Orbán regime. Böjte is a Franciscan monk and the director and founder of the Saint Francis Foundation of Deva, Romania. His foundation provides food, housing, and education to homeless orphans and children living in extreme poverty. Currently, 2,500 children are living in the homes and shelters of the foundation. Father Böjte’s solution to the problem of the hospitals is simple. “If a priest doesn’t keep order in his parish, the bishop would send him packing. It is not the bishop who needs to put things in order, but the one who lives and works there!! The hospital director should also be sacked if his hospital looks like this. It is not the shame of the state, but of those who work there!” Böjte of course ignores the serious underfinancing and understaffing of the Hungarian healthcare system.
Here and there one can find voices of sanity. A woman reported from “one of these squalid” hospitals where she is being quarantined that “from the inside it seems that renovating this building would require at least as much money as building, let’s say, a stadium.” Some commenters, as opposed to the timid MOK, are quite ready to point to conditions in specific hospitals as horrific examples of neglect. Péterfy Hospital, which we are familiar with from Reporter’s description, is one of the examples cited. According to a woman, in the internal medicine section of the hospital one can flush the toilet only by pulling a lever in the water tank.
Soon enough the blame was shifted to the government for spending money “on the Romanians,” on stadiums, building hospitals abroad, and giving billions to churches. As I indicated yesterday, resentment is rising over the Orbán government’s spending sizable sums on improving the lot of the Hungarian minorities in the neighboring countries, which in many cases is expressed as “money spent on the Romanians.” A commenter quipped that “the Orbán government renovated 3,000 churches in the Carpathian Basin to provide places of worship for those who are afraid of dying of COVID-19.”
All told, about 15,000 people viewed MOK’s photos and about 500 comments appeared. The pro-Fidesz contingent was large. The opposition is certain that Fidesz activists pay special attention to sites like that of MOK, which is currently considered to be a government-critical organization.
The two political sides leveled the same criticism against MOK — that the medical association should have named the hospital where the photos were taken. I would go even further. MOK should have collected photos from many of those hospitals where patients and visitors complain about the sanitary condition of the facilities. Yes, I know it is forbidden to take photos in the hospitals, but, in reality, who could prevent people from taking them? There is strength in numbers. Photos from one hospital can get one hospital director into trouble, but photos from 10 or 15 hospitals would carry more weight and would make it clear that it is not just negligence that is responsible for the sorry state of Hungarian healthcare.
Apparently either ignoring or blaming others for the problem with the sad state Hungarian healthcare especially during the COVID pandemic is the standard political move of the Orban government. Unfortunately, politics of this sort cannot and does not improve those pitiful conditions.
“They will blame the doctors and nurses, mark my words.”
I made that remark on Friday, but even I didn’t think their online scum would stoop so low so soon. But hey, this is Fidesz, the party of Christian values.
As long as the public no longer gets to see such pictures, O1G and its mafia-like FIDESZ will continue to deny everything (according to the Russian, Chinese or North Korean scheme: NO, we don’t, but you …).
This exchange of the perpetrator role for the victim role has now been going on for years. This has to come to an end, as the situation in Hungary is spiraling out of control not only politically but also personally.
Perhaps the rest of Europe would even react as the world has already done to a picture (see down below).
Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world.
There is an explanation of the above in the video “What the Far Right is Not Telling You About Viktor Orban’s Hungary”:
This is a pretty good summary of how Viktor (The Messiah) Orbán has screwed up and fleeced his home-land and its people.
Smart, strong? Maybe. Flagrantly criminal? Certainly.
The country is in the shit with this guy.
One thing can be said and it is a fact. The Oli Illiberalati have a great talent. They play the capitalist game on another level better than the communists and the capitalists. They blow by the latter in the dust as they just watch them counting their take of chump change filler.
And all that coming from that world of magyar capitalism which rises from a boutique of pervading cultural illiberalism. It’s the best thing to come along since Lenin and the boys and they don’t even have their former headache of worrying about lands to control. That’s an expense off the ledger by dumping upkeep and good for more profit.
Having visited several hospitals in Budapest over the last two years I can attest to the poor conditions, even the once best Kútvölgyi (serving the communist high nomenclature) is absolutely shabby. At one place the toilets for the whole ward of 20-25 patients were two cubicles, with dangerously detached seats for BOTH MEN and WOMEN, incl. such in wheelchairs. The toilets were not dirty, nor very clean, did not have t.paper or soap, but a bottle of some disinfectant (before the pandemic).
The med staff, overworked and poorly paid as they may be, were rude, disinterested or incompetent on many occasions i witnessed. Better with me, because I pay “gratitudes” (and look like paying), although after proper treatment, eg. when a doc kept me waiting for 1.5 hrs while he went back and forth, kept chatting in the corridors, etc even after I reminded him of my appointment, at the end of the visit I told him why I would/did not pay the “gratitudes” mentioned. Sure, I have a choice in Bud.
I’ve been lucky, not having to go to hospitals in Hungary as a patient too often. But I’ve visited friends sometimes, regularly took friends and neighbours to some more distant places – sometimes together with my wife so we could explore some other city. The reason often was that bus connections were non existent, the wives had no driving license, I wanted to help and I wanted to have a look on what I might expect when falling ill … So I spent quite a few hours in waiting areas and cramped rooms with 4 to 8 beds … Of course not every hospital looks like this, there even are some newly built ones – one I visited had even air condition in the waiting room and I saw a proud sign: Financed by the EU with xxx million of forints But I’ve also seen places that looked almost as bad as that picture or a multi story building where just one elevator was working – being needed of course for patients in bed so everyone else had to use the stairs. And don’t even think about the food that the patients get – don’t know if the nurses and… Read more »
Will hunt for pix of hospitals in the Kadar days and in the days of ‘56. With so many killed at that time it is possible that many died simply because emergency care wasn’t up to it. Don’t know how many were killed immediately but some did indeed linger with wounds. Not sure what percent injured survived their wounds and how the care they received was.
Like a few things about that time that also could be one of those things in the dark. On the other hand maybe some would say hospitals in those days were good and up to par and now there is great deterioration. Couldn’t tell in my situation when there as I didn’t get to see any and can’t make an observation.
“it is forbidden to take photos in the hospitals”
Isn’t this revealing the heart of the matter?
If OV’s government really wanted to improve circumstances inside Hungarian healthcare facilities, they would promote proof [e.g.with photos] of unhygienic and unacceptable circumstances. And let these be published with exact location, so that OV and ‘is Co’s could seriously improve those circumstances!
But instead they make taking photos illegal, under-finance the whole healthcare system and spend much more money [their “own” and EU’s] on pet projects, like sports [for OV], churches [for OV’s xhristian pet party], hunting exhibitions [OV vice-PM and international mouthpiece], etc. etc.
When, oh when, will there be enough brave Hungarian citizens, who will be so disgusted with OV’s “System of National Cooperation” running down the country, don’t care anymore about possible consequences for themselves and under their own name and with their own face start revealing all this?
Let’s start with a series of “Tour de Mi Kórházaink” describing and showing [pictures, videos] unacceptable circumsances encountered inside Hungarian hospitals, one by one!
It is forbidden to take photos in just about any building in Hungary, public or private. Shopping malls, cafes, the metro, supermarkets, most parts of Parliament, office buildings… that’s because a lot of Hungarians are conducting illegal activity and they don’t want photographic evidence thereof. They explain it away by saying they are protecting people’s privacy. Bulloney.
I would have preferred it not to have been so but I have had quite a lot of experience of hospitals in Budapest. The pictures shown are familiar to me – non-functioning toilets, no paper, showers without a rose, nowhere to hang clothes and so… But over the last decade there have been improvements and maintenance work – just not enough of it. At least in Budapest the hospital facilities are used very heavily. It is common doctors to be facing more than 100 patients for diagnosis and treatment every morning. This is the key to the present problem. The funding for proper maintenance has not been provided and anyway the maintenance staff are all working in Germany earning three times as much. Medical staff are often extremely over-loaded and cannot be expected to maintain toilets for patients! Nor can army officers placed in charge be expected to be understanding and sympathetic to the plight of patients. Idiocy. The government (Viktor Orbán) simply does not want to spend the money necessary to provide decent facilities for use by the Hungarian people. Sure, the Fideszniks have their private hospitals and access to their Swiss clinics and the people are left to… Read more »
This is true, the oligarchs, and political class provide significant revenue to Switzerland for medical services. But it is not limited to Hungarians, plenty of Russians, gangsters from Bulgaria and elsewhere do to. Swiss health expenditures per capita are the second or thirdhighest in the world depending on the year looked at. Swiss citizens buy insurance for themselves; there are no employer-sponsored or government-run insurance programs. Unlike other European countries, the Swiss healthcare system is not tax-based. Instead, it is paid for by the individual through contributions into Swiss health insurance scheme and there are many policies for sale. Hence, insurance prices are transparent to the beneficiary. The government defines the minimum benefit package that qualifies for the mandate. Critically, all packages require beneficiaries to pick up a portion of the costs of their care (deductibles and coinsurance) in order to contain costs. About 42% of Swiss citizens chose high-deductible plans (i.e., plans with significant cost-sharing features). Those who wish to acquire supplemental coverage are free to do so on their own. out-of-pocket spending on healthcare is also high; in 2017 it accounted for 28.95% of all healthcare expenditure. This put Switzerland behind only Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, and Lithuania in… Read more »
It might be the hospital in Szeged https://szeged.hu/hirek/37208/szegeden-keszultek-volna-a-koronavirus-centrumot-bemutato-horrorfotok
The paper have written to the Albert Szent-Györgyi clinic about this matter and promise to publish their reponse when it arrives.
I wanted to say, that even if it isn’t the hospital in Szeged, I feel like it’s really telling that people from all over the country can look at those photos and say “oh, yes, that could be our hospital”. Even if these photos were not taken in Szeged, equally shocking photos could be taken here in Szeged.
Quite a detective work. The shower stall looks identical to me.
This looks bad of course. But I prefer the hospital where the lifts did not work and patients had to be moved between floors on wheeled stretchers… by stairs.
OT: a primer into the US election system (why the Senate favors the Republicans as a structural circumstance especially now that the voters are more loyal, ie. less likely to vote for candidates of different parties on the same ballot, and the parties are more disciplined, and ideologically more consistent, than they were 50 years ago). Basically it means that in systems which rely on first past the post elements in their election systems as opposed to proportional representation the conservatives always have a serious built in advantage. This was not so clear before because voters were casting ballots for candidates of different parties (e.g. for a Republican presidential candidate but Democratic senatorial candidate) and the parties themselves more internally divided and incoherent. These features radically changed in the last 20-30 years. This built in advantage of the Republicans is now 5-6-7% points in the US. Basically nation-wide a Democratic presidential candidate must win by that amount to probably win a majority in the electoral college, or for a media state to probably elect Democratic senators. In Hungary, the opposition (assuming it is united) must win by 7-8% points just to have a majority in the Parliament given the rigged… Read more »
In Britain we have similar problems – so I might be really happy about the situation in Germany where we not only have a more just election system but also more educated voters it seems.
Just an example which afaik we haven’t seen/talked about here yet:
In the local elections in Hamburg the SPD/Green coalition got two thirds of the votes earlier this year!
I really doubt you can summon any interest in non-conservative politics here.
In general your comment is correct Marty, there is less ballot splitting than there once was in the USA. It has been politically disastrous for more liberal conservative Republicans like myself.
We used to be able elect Republicans that were strong supporters of national defense and social welfare for the poor paid largely by those in the highest tax brackets with cross over conservative Democrat voters, but that option is gone.
“A few people were even convinced that the photos “were the vile forgeries of a lunatic” or, if real, most likely were taken in Romania or Albania.”
In Hu I often witness the reality denial attitude where even tragic personal experience is turned into hatred and aggression against designated “enemies” in an emotion manipulation process without any factual or logical input. This seems to plague many societies, eg. the US, Hu being familiar examples.
Imo the chickens of the “everyone is right” extreme liberal educational approach have come home and are rousting. Until democracies find an antidote (and change this approach) against the malaise of “feelings trump truth” the irrational, populist tribalism will continue to rip the texture of those societies giving the Trumps and Orbàn’s a big headstart.
You’ll always find a certain percentage of people who are “crazy” – now that the world has been moving “to the left” ie more freedom, more rights for women and minorities of all kind some people feel left out.
The world was so easy when I grew up, now it’s complicated.
Whether it’s racism in the USA, cries against feminism, those liberals in the cities (the deplorables of course don’t even understand a word when those intellectuals are having a discussion …) or generally the feeling that they belong to an upper class and have more rights than the Roma, the immigrants, the Muslims, the unchristians, whatever.
I’m sure everybody here knows some people whose ideas are so crazy – from flatearthers to creationists …
“Imo the chickens of the “everyone is right” extreme liberal educational approach have come home and are rousting.”
Your fascist impulses are finally coming to surface. All white men are fascists and racists after all.
Liberalism, one of the key assumption of this fanciful ideology, is that people can not reach agreement on the most fundamental questions about life. Hence, and in order to avoid civil-war (think of Catholics versus Protestants), Liberalism- the liberal society- requires tolerance for dissenting/differing viewpoints, and “rights” for everyone to live however he sees fit.
Of course this eventually undermines the society itself, it renders it incoherent, each with is own truth (and the right to pursue it).
A**hole ovidiot – don’t you have anything to say on the topic discussed here?
Then just f*ck off, crazy fascist!
I’m sure there are other places where you can spout your nonsense!
Cool it!
Re: “Our colleagues persevere under these circumstances” Perhaps the medical community might go to their libraries and poke into some books on Dr. Semmelweis the doctor who changed medicine and the health of Magyars especially women giving birth back in the mid 19th. His greatest contribution was showing how ‘cleanliness’ eradicates disease and how the hospital environment is critical to the well-being of patients who come to be healed. Maybe perusing his work may help them think about and effect change to the ‘sorry state of health care’ in the country since they are on the medical front lines. But there’s a catch as Semmelweis was reviled initially for his successful work and attacked for his ‘science’. But nevertheless he persevered regardless of his professional trials and succeeding infirmities. Doctors today might want to closely examine their position as they look at the state of health care. It has to be better and they need to be better and ask themselves what else should come about in their ‘perservance’ under the situation. For doctors the focus because of their calling must be concerned at all times with the health and well-being of their patients. And that’s the point of their… Read more »
Re Semmelweis:
His is a tragic story – many docs didn’t accept his ideas and he was put into an insane asylum in Vienna where he died (was killed?) only 47 years old.
If he were working in Hungary right now he probably wouldn’t be treated better …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
In the end it’s no wonder that many docs and nurses are leaving Hungary.
I admire those who stay and try to help – it takes a lot!
Yes. And those doctors and nurses no doubt are crushed by the system. They should get an editor and write some books and get their outrage out. If one takes a look here in the States now there are plenty who are getting their rage out in books. They have an opinion and just can’t keep things in anymore.
But we’re in a big country and the ‘Genius’ Trump can’t go after everybody. Makes it easier to let off steam publicly…..so far. But lately things are getting tighter as people can see the chaotic drift rightward.
Hope it doesn’t get too ornery, ominous and pathetic. Difficult to say this but I fear for the country I was born and raised in as well as my ancestral one. I really do. People here are drinking some real bad Kool-Aid. They simply refuse to examine the consequences. We have to pull back from the brink as we would be sunk with Trump. Better to have him leave with his mess than staying and continuing to mess the bed even worse. He’s an ill wind that would destroy our nation.
Back to Covid:
I hope my observations are not typical. We now have two cases in my wife’s family and on several houses in our street and the neighbouring street we just saw those “red signs” – Quarantine, do not enter!
Some students at my daughters gimnázium tested positive. One boy was positive, his sister (with exactly the same symptoms) tested negative. Some schools here in our area have closed, because teachers tested positive. According to a dutch newspaper (NRC) about 15% of the tests are with false results.Suddenly it seems to be everywhere. But with all these children having a cold, a lot more testing is done. My daughter, luckily, tested negative.
@Brigitta, 10:58 am
It is not clear whether you are referring to Hungary. Are you?
It is disturbing to think that (Dutch newspaper) the COVID-19 test is only 85% accurate. In Hungary, ‘ordinary people’ get to pay HUF 19,500 a pop for a test. The privileged get one for free, of course.
Yes, we live in Hungary. But I read all kinds of newspapers. A dutch newspaper, in this case, did some research about the reliability of the pcr test. 15% gave a wrong result, so a positive test for a person who has no infection with covid-19 and vice versa.
“reliability of the pcr test. 15% gave a wrong result”
what is then the probability of (really) being ill if you test positive ?