QR-code or your life: a letter from the Ministry of Health refuses to help seriously ill people?

Irina Mishina

Nastya, 28, has a congenital heart disease with a complex name: autoimmune thyroiditis. She has been treating him since she was 4 years old. Over time, new sores with long names were added, the essence of which is one thing: the girl has practically no heart today.

At some point, the doctors started talking about a new heart for Nastya - a donor heart. As a last resort, about a pacemaker. For this, she was given a referral to the Shumakov National Medical Research Center for Transplantation and Artificial Organs of the Ministry of Health of Russia. It was not easy: to get a referral, to enroll in the Institute of Transplantology, to wait for my turn, to come to Moscow, get a job in a hotel, pass the PCR, which, according to the registrar, was necessary for the passage and... to receive a refusal to consult.

“Today, in Moscow, daughters were actually denied the provision of medical services on the basis of a Letter from the Ministry of Health, which prohibits entry into medical facilities without a QR-code. The PCR-test I passed yesterday was rejected. The entrance is only for vaccinated, recovered half a year ago and persons with a medical outlet. The saddest thing is that I found out about this only this morning, when I came to the respected NMIC. The Letter of the Ministry of Health itself was posted on the website and on the wall in the form of an advertisement only on October 30. And I signed up for a consultation with my daughter a week ago. There were several people like me and my daughter. All of them did not come to the reception from a nearby street, some came from other regions, having spent a fair amount of money on the train (spending the night in a mini-hotel opposite the National Medical Research Center costs 4,500 rubles). An elderly man in front of me talked on the phone with his attending physician, who could not violate the order and accept it. “I’m getting honey. take time off! I may not live to see tomorrow! " - he spoke almost in a crying voice...", - told "Novye Izvestia" the girl's father Fyodor Ivanov (the surname has been changed - editor's note).

We phoned the press service of the N.M. Shumakov and was asked to substantiate the fact of refusal of medical assistance to people who urgently need it.

As it turned out, there is a letter of recommendation dated October 27, 2021 N 10-0 / I / 2-17691 signed by the Minister of Health Mikhail Murashko.

This letter is crafted in a clever way - so that you will not dig into: paragraph 2 speaks of the need for "admission and hospitalization of citizens for the provision of medical care in an emergency and urgent form (including on an outpatient basis), as well as citizens with diseases in the presence of indications and the impossibility postponement of treatment, including for receiving high-tech medical care".

And in paragraph 3 we read:

"Admission to the organization of adult citizens and workers only upon presentation of a QR-code confirming the fact of their vaccination against a coronavirus infection or a previous illness of a new coronavirus infection".

Nastya and her father were not vaccinated. Fyodor had been ill six months ago, but doctors at his place of residence dissuaded him from being vaccinated. Say, cellular immunity will help not to get sick. Nastya had a mild form of covid, she has enough antibodies, so she has not yet begun to vaccinate, given the severity of her heart disease. So why was it necessary to call a seriously ill girl with her father to Moscow from Yaroslavl? To talk to them through the turnstile?

“I had previously called up with the registry office of the N.M. Shumakov, of course. To my question: "And they will definitely accept me, because in the Vremya program they said that they will not be allowed in?" the kind registrars replied: “Don't watch TV, there is only propaganda! Everything will be fine!". It was strange to see people with fresh PCR tests being deployed from the hospital. But the cost of one test is about 1,500 rubles. They did it for the sake of curiosity, right?" , - Nastya's father is perplexed.

We asked the press secretary of the Shumakov National Medical Research Center, Adel Ulybyshev, to clarify this situation.

“First of all, we apologize to the patient and her father. There is one more important point: many patients after organ transplantation are on immunosuppression, these are special drugs that they drink after organ transplantation. Their immunity is greatly reduced, and any infection can become fatal. We cannot risk their lives. But if the situation is life-threatening, if you urgently need help, we will accept a person without a QR code. An additional examination was scheduled for Nastya, after which we will take her out of turn", - Adel Ulybyshev, head of the press service of the Shumakov National Medical Research Center, explained to NI.

It would seem a happy ending. But it is too early to put an end to this story. Relying on the notorious letter of recommendation from the Minister of Health, many medical institutions have ceased to provide routine assistance to people without QR codes and even with them. The most vulnerable in this situation were the most sick people - those for whom vaccination is contraindicated for health reasons. Those who are on the verge of life and death. Among them are cancer patients. And a member of my family, for example, has been waiting for an operation for a taracar hernia for a year, the failure of which at any moment can result in peritonitis and death. But everyone postpones the operation due to the difficult epidemiological situation. During this time, the person has already managed to get sick with coronavirus, cure it, get treatment for post-covid complications, get two vaccinations and get the coveted QR code twice, but there was no vital operation, and no. Doctors make a helpless gesture: “Planned aid has been curtailed until better times. Wait". What to wait for? The death?

Meanwhile, the Russian Constitution stipulates the right of citizens to medical care. According to Article 41 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, everyone has the right to health care and medical assistance. Responsibility for failure to provide assistance to a patient without good reason by a person obliged to provide it in accordance with the law or with a special rule is provided for in Article 124 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. This responsibility arises in the event of negligence causing harm to health, as well as the death of the patient. Is there a legal incident here? We turned to lawyer Lyubov Goncharova for clarification.

“The situation is twofold. Restriction of medical care is, in fact, a restriction of the constitutional rights of citizens. The emergency mode has not been announced, but in fact its rules are in effect. Routine medical care is really not provided. And in the regions there are already precedents when people filed claims in courts due to the lack of medical care during a pandemic. If, as a result of refusal in treatment, there is evidence of damage to health, this is the basis for initiating a case. In general, the only way out in this case is paid medicine. This is a question of survival that the state has put us in front of. Yes, there are now no clear regulatory legal acts regarding the provision of medical care. And the doctors were caught between two fires. On the one hand, they must heal and rescue, on the other hand, the Ministry of Health assigned them full responsibility for receiving people without QR-codes. I see a way out in the development of additional normative legal acts that would regulate this situation”, - says lawyer Lyubov Goncharova.

Meanwhile, the "supermortality" in Russia for two years of the pandemic exceeded half a million people. At least half of the deaths are not from covid. After all, the coronavirus is just one of the factors of "supermortality" that is observed in Russia in 2020-2021. According to the official position of the Russian government, voiced by Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, mortality in the Russian Federation in 2020 increased by 17.9% compared to 2019. The proportion of deaths from coronavirus infection in 2020 from the total increase in excess mortality in 2020 is 31%. And taking into account the deaths from other diagnoses, but who had a positive test for covid, this is 50% of the excess mortality in 2020. It follows from this that no more than half or even a third die from the coronavirus. Has it not turned out that it is not the epidemic that is to blame for the deaths of people, but the measures to combat it?