„"The protest in support" - an oxymoron that has become a symbol of our civic energy. Last night we were in front of the Ministry of Health in Sofia to support the people in front of and the people at St. Anna Hospital in Varna.
We simply wanted to support the medics who have been rejected by the system. A sad paradox of the times we live in – a protest not for upgrading, but for breaking away from the bottom.
We supported the pediatric surgery team at St. Anna Hospital, whose decision to leave was not impulsive. After years of accumulating problems that the system refuses to solve, the medics are in a deadlock. Perhaps it would even be easier if it were only about money...
But the reason is complex and deeply systemic. There is a lack of normal working conditions, chronic overwork without quality rest, a constant regime of on-call duty on the verge of physical and mental endurance, a lack of enough people, a lack of colleagues to take over shifts, a lack of a system to protect those on whom the lives of our children depend.
Without further ado – children's healthcare in Bulgaria is underfunded on a monstrous scale, close to 80%, and this is the result of a decade of systematic refusal to invest in something that does not bring a quick financial return.
According to official data from the Ministry of Health, for the period 2016–2025, hospitals in Bulgaria have declared 182,219,258 BGN for capital expenditures for children's wards (funds for repairs, equipment, apparatus and basic conditions for treatment).
The actual funds allocated for the same period are 35,974,328 leva, which means that the state has covered only 20% of the declared needs. Of these almost 36 million leva, 25 million are for NEW construction. They are not even for the maintenance of the already existing hospitals.
Even in years with higher relative funding, it remains far below the real needs of the system. When you systematically underfund children's departments for ten years, you condemn them to ruin, depopulation, and ultimately closure.
Ten years! TEN YEARS!
We would like to remind you that against this background, the healthcare budget is growing every year, private hospitals are sprouting like mushrooms, and Bulgaria is becoming the country with the most hospital beds per 1,000 people in the EU. And because 2+2 is 4, we know that there IS money.
What is happening in Varna is not an exception, but a natural result. The pediatric surgery at St. Anna is the fourth closed department in this hospital in the last five years. The hospital is state-owned, and yet the state has been a passive observer for years.
At the same time, the medical facility is forced to file a lawsuit against the NHIF for unpaid activity, because since the middle of last year, the fund no longer pays for activity above the limit - despite the fact that the children are not sick "over the limit"... "We are practicing 18th century medicine," the head of the department, Dr. Rumen Hristov, sadly states (link to the interview in the comment).
What are we left with? You protest to say "stay", you protest because you know that if these people leave, there will be no one to replace them, you protest because you no longer want to hear about "there's no money" while the children's departments close one by one.
Because if we remain silent about Varna today, tomorrow it will be another city. Both ours and yours…
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