Left-liberal parties, headed by the Green-Left Bloc, have collected signatures from 32 MPs and put forward a motion for a vote of no confidence in Health Minister, Vili Beros, due to what they described as a series of scandals in the sector.

“The minister has to go because of the case of Mirela Cavajda and her inability to get a medically indicated pregnancy termination in her 22nd week of pregnancy, as well as lack of access to pregnancy termination up to the 10th week from conception due to conscientious objection, invoked by as many as 58 percent of gynecologists,” state agency Hina said, citing the motion.

“In as many as 6 out of 29 public hospitals in Croatia that have agreements with the Croatian Health Insurance Fund (HZZO), not one gynecologist will perform an abortion due to conscientious objection,” opposition MPs said.

It further pointed to Minister Beros’ involvement in the case of the Medikol clinic and the Uskok anti-corruption office’s investigation of the ministry’s contract with the Cuspis company. The ministry paid the company 2.75 million kuna for 6,750 working hours in 12 days to upgrade two IT systems, which would mean that each of the five people doing the job worked 112 hours a day.

The opposition MPs also consider as problematic the case of KBC Zagreb University Hospital head Ante Corusic, who was reported for malpractice and made public private information about a patient and was involved in incidents in which he was under the influence of alcohol and made threats with a pistol.

They also said that Beros failed with regard to the fight against the Covid pandemic, during which almost 16,000 Croatians died, with only 55 percent of the population having received two shots of a vaccine, which puts Croatia at the bottom of the list of EU countries, with only Bulgaria and Romania faring worse.

Another scandal involves suspect organ transplants at KBC Zagreb for which Beros said that “possible procedural mistakes and irregularities that were identified were not that significant.”

The health reform has not been implemented and the health sector’s debts are accumulating, debts to wholesale drug suppliers are growing, waiting lists are getting longer, hospitals are decaying and staff in the health sector are disappointed with their working conditions and are emigrating or finding jobs in the private sector while patients are compelled to pay for expensive treatment in the private sector or abroad, the Opposition said.

MP Ivana Kekin (Green-Left Bloc) said that Beros had to be replaced because in the past two and a half years of his term an already deteriorating health sector had started to decay rapidly.

“He has totally failed in two essential tasks, the pandemic and health reform. During the pandemic, we ended up among eight countries with the highest fatality rate and were one of the three countries with the lowest level of inoculation in the EU while reforms haven’t even started,” Kekin told a press conference on Tuesday.

In addition, Beros has “amazingly quickly produced a series of scandals,” she said.  Those scandals have shown that citizens cannot get their legally guaranteed rights and taxpayers’ money is continually being siphoned into the private pockets of those closely connected to the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), said Kekin.

“The latest scandal has shown that in the Croatian health system it is easier to buy a kidney than get an abortion,” she added.

Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader, MP Pedja Grbin, said the announced health care reform was not happening but that new scandals in the public procurement system were. “A device procured by the private system for less than 5 million kuna costs the public health system more than 10 million kuna – that’s how Beros is managing the health sector,” said Grbin.

“Instead of prevention programs or reducing waiting lists, they are proposing an increase in the participation fee for hospital treatment from two to four thousand kuna,” he added.

MP Katarina Peovic (Workers’ Front) said that debts in the health system were increasing yet almost half a billion kuna a year was paid to various private hospitals and for the outsourcing of public health services.

MP Dalija Oreskovic (Centar) underscored that since Beros was appointed minister it had become even more visible that political affiliation was the sole criterion for the appointment of senior personnel in public health institutions, which was why citizens were unable to exercise their rights as guaranteed by the constitution and laws but as dictated by various interest and worldview groups.

The opposition motion was also supported by independent MP Damir Bajs of the Fokus/Independents group as well as two MPs from the Social Democrats.