When Kamel Mensari began going regularly to the Pierre and Marie Curie Centre (CPMC) in Algiers to visit a cousin with cancer, he was shocked by the hospital’s unsanitary conditions. Waiting times for admission to cancer treatment can be up to 6 months because service is overloaded.
Last June, a father of a family filmed the empty services of the pediatric clinic El-Mansoura in Constantine, while he was desperately looking for a doctor for his suffering child.
Spending in this area has gone from 2 billion euros in 2010 to 3.5 billion euros in 2014. For Djilali Hadjajd, president of Transparency International Algeria, many Algerian patients are left on the spot, especially because of the corruption that is plaguing the sector.
Problems concerning the training of medical teams and the lack of equipment have also been reported in several other establishments.
“No syringes are in the pediatric emergency room of Hussein Dey”
Abderrahmane Semmar, a member of the citizen journalist group “Les Envoyés Spéciaux”, recently spent 24 hours in the pediatric emergency department of the Hussein Dey hospital, east of Algiers.
Maternities crowded, three babies piled up in incubators designed for a single infant, ant invasion in the rooms, old or non-existent material… Meanwhile, the president is building a gigantic mosque that will cost a billion euros, a little more than a third of the budget of the Ministry of Health (370 billion DA, PLF 2014).
The delirium of certain Algerian ministers has, definitely, no limits. Boudiaf Abdelmalek is the Minister of Health and Population, and has been the talk of an astonishing and mostly ironic outing. During his last trip to Annaba, in the east of Algeria, this minister of population did not find better to respond to the tragedy that plagues Algerian health structures than to compare with European hospitals.
No one ever dared to ask if the Algerian hospitals are performing, but then why do Bouteflika, General Toufik, Nezzar seek care in France and Switzerland?
The state of deliquescence of our hospitals has often been the center of endless debates for some time. Promises have been made and officials have been sacked, but their situation remains worrying.
Aghiles M, 20, can be considered damned to have fallen ill in Algeria. After a long wait, Aghiles went himself to seek his doctor, “second corridor,” indicated the receptionist. After being summarily examined, he was diagnosed on the basis of approximations which subsequently turned out to be false. The patient had the typical symptoms of hyperglycaemia, checked by other means. “IH” indicated the glycemic measuring device, more than six grams of sugar per liter of blood. At the height of the absurd: “The hospital has no means to measure blood glucose,” announced the doctor. Surprising when one knows that a special budget is devoted to the purchase of test strips, because the glucometers are supplied free of charge by the distributors. In addition to questions about the equipment of the hospital, Aghiles had to face being nervous, overworked and under pressure. “We are powerless,” explained a doctor, adding, dismayed, “We lack means.” The disenchantment was only stronger. They felt that they were exploited by an establishment marked by the seal of mercantilism.
At the entrance to the establishment, Aghiles and his mother met a noble person who advised them: “Go somewhere else”, she said. “Here we are going to ruin you for nothing. The hospital does not have service for diabetics,” she confessed.
