The head of the Croatian Association for the Promotion of Patients' Rights, Jasna Karacic, said there was great resistance to vaccination and distrust of the profession in Croatia due to disinformation on COVID-19 that was spreading across social networks.

Disinformation is spreading on social networks much faster than scientific information. This is also present in other countries, but in Croatia it is most pronounced in the entire EU, Karacic told the Croatian state news agency Hina.

She said people should listen to experts, but the problem is also in the way the national COVID-19 crisis management team is communicating, as they do not send accurate messages to the public.

“First they made a mistake when they called on people to get vaccinated, and people thought the vaccine would protect them 100 percent so they could stop behaving responsibly,” Karacic said.

The government obviously has no control over anti-vaxxers, nor those people who were in a dilemma about vaccination, and gave up, for example, because they did not receive the necessary information even after they had submitted a request over the official website Cijepise.hr, she said.

There will be increase in chronic and oncological diseases again

The problems of other patients have escalated during the pandemic, they have limited access to health care because many hospitals are denying them regular health care due to COVID patients. In a situation like that, many patients had to go to private doctors, so the private health sector profited from the crisis, Karacic said.

“Other European countries ensured doctor consultations for their chronic patients, and they didn’t only devote themselves to COVID patients. That is why last year’s problems will happen again now — there will be an increase in chronic and oncological diseases, so the number of deaths from other diseases, which could have been prevented otherwise, will double,” Karacic said.