The QSUT's latest request for donations found a staunch defender in the Health and Social Welfare Committee. Socialist MP Vasil Llajo tried to convince that there is nothing worrying about the largest hospital in the country asking for citizens' help, since, according to him, donations are a normal practice around the world.
The problem is that, in an attempt to put the situation into perspective, the MP managed to contradict himself in a matter of seconds. He initially stated that donations “do not indicate needs,” only to immediately go on to say that an institution “extracts its own needs in order to fill them with donations.” So, needs are not indicated… except in cases where they need to be indicated in order to be filled with donations.
In fact, no one has a problem with donations. They are a form of solidarity that exists everywhere. The paradox is not that a hospital accepts help, but that the largest public hospital in the country is forced to publish a list of over 100 basic pieces of equipment that it lacks, while the state budget finds millions of euros for much more “urgent” priorities, such as private concerts.
A donation for a special device, for a new technology or for a research project is quite normal. But when the list includes respirators, defibrillators, monitors, electrocautery, electric syringes and dozens of other devices that should be the minimum standard in a university hospital, then the problem is no longer called a “donation culture”. It is called a lack of public investment.
When the arguments began to run out, the debate took a personal turn. The MP decided to recall that during the pandemic he had made donations to the QSUT and emergency structures, emphasizing that he had not put his name on them, as proof of "simplicity."
No one has reason to question an act of humanity. But the story becomes somewhat more ironic when one remembers that during the same period his company, Intermedica Center, was benefiting from contracts with considerable values from the health system for anti-COVID testing and laboratory materials. Thus, the pandemic resulted in a period where business and charity run in parallel: on the one hand, millions from the state, on the other, donations that are today used as an argument to convince the public that it is quite normal for QSUT to ask for citizens' help again.
