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Turkmenistan: Healthcare System Virtually
Destroyed, Says UK-based Group
IRIN Asia
June 9, 2005
A recent report on healthcare and human rights in Turkmenistan, published by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, highlights a deteriorating situation in the former Soviet republic. The report urges the international community to put pressure on Ashgabat to institute immediate reforms.
"The current situation in Turkmenistan's healthcare system is very serious
and in recent years, the healthcare system has been systematically
dismantled. Since independence, state funding for healthcare has
significantly decreased," Bernd Rechel, one of the authors of the report,
told IRIN from London on Thursday.
"User fees have been introduced for an increasing range of medical services,
rendering health care services financially inaccessible to the majority of
the population. Many people are dying prematurely, because they cannot
afford health care," Rechel added.
The 'Human Rights and Health in Turkmensitan' report, by Rechel and his
co-author Professor Martin McKee released on Friday, was undertaken in late
2004 and early 2005 by the European Centre on Health of Societies in
Transition (ECOHOST) with funding from the New York-based Open Society
Institute (OSI).
The report said the healthcare system in Turkmenistan was poor, even by the
"grossly inadequate" standards of Central Asian nations, with the situation
in the energy-rich state being made worse by the country's autocratic
president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov, whose regime had virtually destroyed
the health care system.
It provides an in-depth analysis of the impact of the dictatorship in
Turkmenistan on the health of the nation and outlines what should be done at
national and international level to prevent further deterioration of the
situation.
"There are a number of human rights violations with obvious health
implications, such as the habitual imprisonment, torture and beatings of
perceived opponents of the regime, the suppression or deportation of
religious and ethnic minorities, the incarceration of part of the population
in unsanitary and overcrowded penal colonies or the demolition of private
homes to make way for grandiose presidential projects," the report said.
"The neglect of the health sector culminated in the dismissal of 15,000
healthcare workers in 2004 and their partial replacement by untrained
military conscripts. In February 2005, president Niyazov ordered the closure
of all hospitals outside the capital, Ashgabat, undermining access to health
services even further," Rechel maintained, adding that it would particularly
affect those in greatest need of health services: the poor, children, the
elderly and those with chronic diseases.
According to Rechel, the dismantling of the healthcare system will
inevitably result in a further deterioration of the health of the people
living in the country. Life expectancy is already lower than in any other
country in Eastern Europe or Central Asia and Turkmen people die on average
16 years earlier than their counterparts in Western Europe.
"The government is also closing its eyes to a rising incidence of HIV and
tuberculosis [TB]. It has issued an official ban on the reporting of
infectious diseases. This policy of secrecy and denial is a recipe for
disaster," Rechel warned. "Future outbreaks of plague, as well as a rising
incidence of HIV and TB are very likely to happen."
Moreover, Prof. McKee said that Niyazov had also shut virtually all the
country's higher education facilities, making it impossible to be trained in
medicine or other healthcare professions.
Although, Niyazov's regime pretended that there were not enough resources
for the health sector, it was virtually impossible to verify that claim as
there were no transparent governmental budgets, Rechel noted.
"The country resides over vast reserves of oil and gas. Instead of using
this potential wealth for the benefit of the population, however, the
president is amassing great personal fortunes and uses some of them to
pursue grandiose vanity projects, while poverty has become very common," he
claimed.
Both experts called on the international community to put pressure on the
government to improve health and stop human rights abuses.
"The international community has to recognise the scale of the current
health crisis, urge the Turkmen government to respect the human right to
health and carefully condition external assistance to the country. It will
also be necessary to increase the pressure on the regime to improve its
human rights record," Rechel said.
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