Thursday, March 4, 2010

Ministry of Magic

Brittany, Elise, Patrick and myself had the joy to attend the Ministry of Health, Republic of Moldova. We met with Valeriu Sava MD PhD MPH who was Head of the Department.
We sat around a table with 2 other officials and our wonderful interpreter Radok. We discussed our mission here and what we wanted to accomplish. He told us that in 2001 he stayed with the Vice-President of United Health care and studied how insurance works in our country. I was able to tell him that my next door neighbor is President of United Health care. He spoke to us in English and Moldovan. He described how their public health system works and that they do have similar programs as medicare and medicaid to help the children and the elderly. They have minimum funds from their taxes to distribute among all the programs.

He sincerely asked several times what we would recommend to help his country.
We talked about fluoridated water as the best solution and that we have similar problems in both countries from the urban to the rural areas. They have several cities that have too much Fluoride in their drinking water.

A major differences in our culture applies to service. Their culture is from the Soviet times or communistic times where no one helps anyone and no one volunteers. They hold on to their possessions (of which they have so little). We discussed that other people in Moldova see what we are doing and that they will want to do the same. I said a better approach is to change the children and get them to volunteer at elderly houses during the school year.

Their medical school students must work in the public health for 2 years after school.. I recommended that they should do the same for their dental. Dr. Horwitz and I discussed that this would be the best way to get dentist to work in under privileged areas in North Carolina and save tax payers millions vs. building a new ECU dental school.

We left with a better understanding of their health care system and realized that we have the same problems in America. Their is never enough money to help everyone, but you do the best you can do for the most.

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