Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks during ceremony for new fleet of life-saving ambulances of the Health Emergency Service:

A small revolt erupted in our healthcare system few years ago, when the government announced plan to reform the health emergency service. I am convinced the reform outcomes are today obvious and meaningful if we were to take facts into account. Facts that in this world and at these times of anti-facts are increasingly rare and difficult to highlight. However, we have no other choice but rely on the facts of our efforts and work and provide other fresh and meaningful facts through work.

It would take a long time to tell the state of the health emergency service few years ago and hard efforts to accept the reality since they say that people, by nature, tend to quickly forget bad things. Physicians and healthcare personnel also know quite well that their patients quickly forget what they have gone through as soon as they are released from hospital and tend to neglect your advices so that they find themselves in a critical situation and return to the hospital again.

Today, we can proudly say that the past will remain forever a past albeit the future is still fare away from building a national health emergency service that would live up to its name and the today’s challenges in order to respond in real time to every family and individual in the Republic of Albania. However, a significant data is obvious today and that is the very essence of the initially highly-contested reform we launched. To call the ambulance, there is no longer needed to call first the hospital and keep on dialling phone numbers that never answer and indefinitely wait for the ambulance and health emergency service show up at your front door.

The National Health Emergency Service today is a completely autonomous service directly dealing with the citizens in need for health care. It has transformed from a degraded service, the very image of a hopeless state service, into a service that covers and provides first aid treatment in whole territory of the Republic of Albania.

We doubled investment in healthcare services this year, although a lot remains to be done in this sector.

The health emergency personnel have doubled compared to five years ago. As many as 448 doctors, nurses and supporting personnel work in the health emergency service.

A digitized and computerized National Health Emergency Service is now fully operational, capable of providing a real time response to any emergency call. Just imagine that over 49 000 both Albanian and foreign citizens have been provided with health care service in the healthcare centres in the country’s tourist areas during a period from June 1 through September 15 only, thanks to the direct care from the National Health Emergency Service that has deployed 17 ambulances along Albania’s coastline.

As many as 900 emergency calls are directly transferred to the National Health Emergency Service via the computerized system on daily basis. We have put an end to the story of busy network whenever the citizens dialled the health emergency service number, whereas the hospital’s personnel working in the night shift were sleeping and snoring instead. This story was not taking place 400 or 40 years ago, but just 4 to 5 years ago.

Every health emergency service is registered online, whereas the time to provide first aid has been significantly reduced. Moreover, around 50% of the first aid is provided at home by the health emergency service personnel thanks to the emergency personnel training and readiness. These ambulances are no longer taxis that pick up patients and leave them at the hospital’s doors, but they deliver first aid. The ambulances have halved the number of patients who need help by providing service at the patients’ home. No such services were provided not long ago, when ambulances just transported patients to the hospital. Not long ago, this was the National Health Emergency Service. It was just the doctors’ and nurses’ heroism who did whatever they could to save people’s lives in a completely degraded and corrupt healthcare system.

Significant funding has been allocated to support investments in the pre-hospital emergency care services. On the other hand, the standardized Health Emergency Service and paramedics uniforms are not a façade, but the very image of a team always ready to work and as such they are work uniforms. The healthcare emergency service and paramedics are now a team ready to work and deliver adequate service to anyone who needs emergent health care.

As many as 52 brand new ambulances add to the fleet of 100 modern units that have been integrated with the inherited ambulances.

To figure out the state of the emergency health care service not long ago it would suffice to take a look at the ambulance that is about to be displayed at the museum of the past and compare it with the new ambulances that will become operational today.

We have built today a National Health Emergency Service that is available to help in emergencies 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Thanks to the cardiac and cerebral and vascular service in place, the health emergency service has saved the lives of 3 000 people since November 2015, according to official data, and this is the accomplishment of our healthcare system, which, according to certain commentators, who – God forbid that they never end up in a hospital –  have seen hospitals on TV screen only, but they keep on talking about the country’s hospitals and health care centres and doctors and nurses considering the cases of corrupt doctors and nurses only and describing hospitals as places where people die. Of course, the death of a person makes the headlines, whereas saving of the lives of over 3000 people is not news worth reporting. Of course the case of a corrupt doctor or nurse not only is worth reporting, but it also becomes a reason to prejudice entire healthcare personnel. To them, the story of doctors and nurses who work heroically is not worth reporting.

After all, whether worth reporting or not, a reason for us to take pride in is the simple truth about saving the lives of thousands of people who increasingly address the National Health Emergency Service and security like never before in the history of this country. The National Health Emergency Service should definitely be closer to the people and the service should become much faster and sophisticated. But it has never been closer to the citizens than today and this happens thanks to all these people on orange colours today.

All those who shed crocodile tears over the doctors and nurses, who, according to them, are massively leaving the country and abandoning the country’s hospitals, should know that the National Health Emergency service is headed by an honoured doctor who has returned back home to reform this system and he is the main protagonist of this transformation. One has to be really unwilling to use his own eyes and not to see.

On the other hand, we continue to support important investment in the entire primary health care system across the country. As many as 80 new health care centres have been already built under the government’s ambitious programme to construct some 300 300 health care facilities and clinics all over the country. As many as 100 other health care facilities will be built to provide health care services to more than half a million citizens of this country next year.

At the same time, we will keep investing in the University Hospital Centre in Tirana, the Surgical Hospital, Department of Internal Diseases and Medicine, Paediatric Hospital, the Emergency and Pathology Hospital in the city of Elbasan, and the regional Kukes Hospital. In the meantime, the regional hospitals in Gjirokaster and Lezha, the Maternity Hospital in Berat will be reconstructed.

During this year of abandoning or deserting Albania’s healthcare system by doctors and nurses, according to media, as many as 153 physicians and 820 nurses have been employed in the health system, while many others are awaiting to be employed in the health system.

It is an important fact that we have ensured a merit-based employment system for over 4000 nurses who have applied via the portal “Nurses for Albania” to find a job here in Albania and not in Germany, because, completely different from what has been happening over the past 25 years in the country, nurses are no longer entitled to take up a job position through the help of a political party, friends or bribery, but only on the basis of their score performance at the national test they have to take.

Some 300 young doctors will also be employed through this merit-based system and their performance after January and they will be granted the right to choose the department they wish to work and contribute. We will provide a monthly salary equal to salaries in Germany for every doctor who decides to give his or her contribution to the areas far from their hometown. We will provide same salary we pay to every doctor who leaves Tirana and other residential areas and instead decide to join the national healthcare service anywhere in the territory of Albania. In addition to their monthly pay, they receive a pay bonus ranging from 2000 to 25000 dollars and if we were to take into account the income tax rates they pay here and which are five times lower than in Germany, let them then do the math themselves and decide what would be better for them. However, our healthcare system doesn’t and will for sure never face a shortage of doctors and healthcare workers. Meanwhile, to all of those who are seeking to gain experience and work abroad, we wish them every success as they are an added intellectual and professional value and experience that will return to the country one day.

Of course the doctors and nurses current pay is far from the level we want it to be, but it is also far from being what it used to be. The tax rate on the personal income for doctors and nurses receiving monthly wages of more than 1.5 million lek either in the private and public health sectors of the Republic of Albania is now much lower than in the past. The wages of doctors and nurses will increase again next year. Likewise, next year will provide 1200 dollars a year, or 100 dollars a month, in scholarship to every excellent medical student, and the government will also pay the whole annual tuition fee for best performing students with grade point average 9 and 10. And it will cost us dearly, because all medical students are the best performing students. However, we are committed to reward their efforts and welcome them to our healthcare system after having paid the tuition fee for them, after having provided the monthly scholarship and make them ready to choose to work in Albania or abroad. But this is for sure another added value to our national health system we want to build.

In addition to the scholarship to excellent students, we will also provide cash bonuses for newborns. We will provide 40,000 lek for the first child, double to 80,000 lek for the second child and treble to 120,000 lek for the third or more children.

I wish you all a Happy New Year and every success in the National Health Emergency service!