| The case of Khabarovsk doctors turns from criminal to economic The authorities of the Khabarovsk Territory seem to be trying to hush up a loud scandal that erupted after the details of a criminal case were made public on the facts of illegal human organ transplants in the 1st and 2nd regional hospitals. Yesterday it became known that Tatyana Lamash, the deputy prosecutor of the Zheleznodorozhny district of Khabarovsk, the first official to lift the curtain on the case of Khabarovsk doctors, resigned. Formally, Ms. Lamache leaves of her own free will. But, as a Vremya Novostei newspaper correspondent learned from unofficial sources, the employee of the prosecutor’s office was “asked” to leave on good terms, since her ideas about medical abuses differed from the opinions of many influential people in the regional center.
Let us recall that in early April, Tatyana Lamash told reporters that in the only institution in the Khabarovsk Territory that has the right to engage in transplantology, the Dalmedcenter, the removal of organs was carried out in violation of the law. “The doctors were in private practice on the hospital grounds,” she said. -- Depending on the patient’s wealth, the fee for a donor organ varied from 2 thousand rubles. up to 40 thousand dollars.” The reason for the prosecutor's investigation was a collective complaint from 15 people, which was received by the plenipotentiary representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the Far Eastern District. Relatives of involuntary donors demanded to know why the internal organs of deceased loved ones disappeared.
Although the regional prosecutor’s office now continues to investigate the case brought by Tatyana Lamash and her colleagues, a radical change has occurred in the rhetoric of its employees. Instead of statements about the shocking actions of doctors, investigators began to somehow shyly hint that the case was generally ordinary. In particular, Oleg Besedin, an investigator for particularly important cases at the regional prosecutor’s office, noted that today law enforcement agencies can only talk about some cases of abuse of official position.
“Patients entitled to free treatment were registered as patients of a commercial company and were forced to pay money for the operation,” Mr. Besedin explained. - Accusations of doctors of killing potential donors, which all the media are buzzing about, in my opinion, have no basis yet. Of course, upon completion of the investigation, various violations will be proven. For example, why did the commission for ascertaining death include doctors from the organ procurement team? Why did the medical examiner give permission to take organs from a person who died from a criminal injury, without the mandatory permission of the prosecutor. Or determining the moment of death - corrections are noticeable in the copies of documents we have. We will be able to answer this question more accurately when we have the originals. In the meantime, a case has been initiated against several doctors under Art. 285-3 (abuse of official powers), which is more about economic reasons.”
According to the editors, in the near future the regional authorities will try to transfer the conflict around the medical scandal into the plane of an ordinary “economic matter” - they say that it is all the doctors’ fault that they took money for operations, but there were no illegal kidney removals. The media controlled by the government of the region have already received an urgent request not to disturb the public until the end of the official inspection of the Ministry of Health of the region. True, the regional Minister of Health Valentina Savkova has repeatedly stated that she is not going to conduct any inspections. And to frustrate those who are especially zealous, doctors promise to sue every media outlet that accuses them of crimes. Yuri ALEXEEV, Khabarovsk |
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