Communication between the Technical Committee of Experts of Albania and the Coronavirus Advisory Board of Turkey about measures to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic:

Prime Minister Edi Rama: Hello everyone! We are honoured that members of the Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board of the Republic of Turkey have arrived in Tirana to exchange and share their precious experience with our Technical Committee of Experts and assess the situation and certainly draw valuable conclusions on this stage of our history that can be best described by a quote by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who used to say: “Mankind is a single body and each nation a part of that body.”

It is perhaps never before in our lives that this famous quote by Atatürk best coincides with the pandemic time, an aggression on all mankind that has shown that the boundaries and all the differences of our daily lives are worthless. In fact, this is about health and our destinies are inevitably all intertwined.

We are well aware this is a war that no nation can win on their own, despite their size, despite their opportunities and power. On the contrary, the more the countries communicate and interact, coordinate our capacities and exchange experiences, unify the approach to this invisible enemy, the greater the chance of winning this war, saving as many lives and healing as many wounds as we can, because we all know that deaths and injuries from this aggression are inevitable.

Throughout this period we have tried to learn as much as possible from others and one of the countries we have closely followed closely and with which we have had the opportunity to communicate and constantly exchange of experiences is Turkey. I believe that the guarantee of this common war is not the politicians, but the experts. The more the strategy of this war is dictated by their opinion, the better the effort of the governments and states works.

Turkey’s Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board is to be specially credited for the fact that Turkey, thanks to the expertise and the preparations the experts in the friendly country made, was one of the best-prepared nations at the moment when this invisible enemy showed up and in the first phase, as we all know, many countries, including the most powerful and large countries and those with immense financial and human resources, found themselves in extremely difficult situation. Guided by the scientific opinion of its experts and its Scientific Board, Turkey imposed a series of social distance measures, well before the World Health Organization’s decision to declare COVID-19 a global pandemic. Of course, by building this human barrier, the spread of the disease in Turkey took much longer time than in other countries and these measures gave government, institutions and the whole health system enough time to better prepare. Likewise, Turkey had a national strategy for pandemic preparedness since 2019. This is another element that has made Turkey to stand out in this battle, as well as some other countries compared to other nations that were taken by surprise.

By closely watching several countries we have considered to learn from them, we found out that Turkey was one of the first to set up the experts’ operational board and a Task Force within the Ministry of Health. This experience helped us too, as we acted quickly in these two directions and fortunately be one of the countries best prepared for the first wave of the pandemic, which also was the first surprise attack threatening to inflict a considerable number of victims, but, above all, it threatened to plunge our health system into chaos.

We believe we have made the right steps, but this process, in my view and as we all agree, includes and contains many unknowns and the unknown is always, every day, and the unpredictability of the process, though significantly up since day one to date, however it remains incomplete. For this reason, the steps, tactics and decisions are flexible all the time, as it is really like a war with not only one side acting, but there is another side, an invisible one in this case, that is in constant action, and moving along a trajectory, more predictable today than it was on the day one, but, nevertheless, not entirely predictable of how things will go on in a process, about which nobody can say for sure when it is going to end.

However, during the first wave of the pandemic, Albania was one of the countries with the lowest fatality rate in Europe and the least affected country in the region in terms of all indicators taken into account in this case, as we made use of every day to prepare the required hospital structures for the upcoming months and for the upcoming phases of the pandemic. I am very happy that today we can openly state that the system is stable, that the COVID-19 patients needing hospitalization are not met with impossibility, that the established network of structures that treat COVID patients has capacities to expand further if needed. Of course, even though we have managed to reasonably rationalize our non-limited financial resources, on the contrary, either to best motivate the teams of the frontline doctors and nurses, as well as in view of the specific logistics required to face this aggression that literally kills you, and this logistics includes oxygen lines and specific equipment in significant numbers.

I would like to say this also in the presence of the Turkish friends that I am extremely happy that we are lucky to have all the time a Committee of Experts, who have clearly demonstrated that do not lag behind experts and expertise of most developed countries. Fortunately, being also all aware that it is their responsibility to guide and advice us on the actions we should undertake and it is the politics that should decide about the measures, we have succeeded to create a very good synergy between the political decision-making and the experts’ directives. I would like to thank again our experts, some of whom are at the frontline of the everyday battle. Here on the screen you can see some of the Committee members, who are in the meantime serving, fighting a stressful war on this invisible enemy for so many months on and on the other hand never fail to be available, not only for the Committee of Experts meeting, but also for all our needs for consultation and communication. I wish that with the high obedience we have shown to them, with the indisputable appreciation we have always made of their guidelines by strictly implementing their directives; at least we have not caused them any more stress in the incredible stress they are through at their work.

We decided to hold this communication public so that all interested citizens are provided an opportunity to hear not only us, as they have heard us constantly, not only our experts, but also the well-known experts whom we are honoured to have them here, to perhaps better understand or even come across one more example of the fact that this is a joint war and in this war, we are in constant communication and that Albania has nothing different and does nothing different from what Turkey or other countries do. To understand this, listening directly to the friends who have come from Turkey, I am concluding my opening remarks and give the floor first to one of the representatives of the Turkish Scientific Advisory Board.

*Prof. Recep Ozturk: Honourable Prime Minister, honourable Health Minister, honourable Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey to Albania, I would like first to convey the thank you messages and the cordial greetings from the President of the Republic of Turkey, Mr. Erdgoan. Referring to your phone call, Honourable Prime Minister, you had with our President, we acted and gathered as members of the Committee Board and headed to Albania immediately upon your invitation. At the same time we met with the Minister of Health of the Republic of Albania and I want to thank her in your presence for her hospitality.

As soon as we landed in Albania, we met the members of the working team at the Albanian Ministry of Health and we exchanged various thoughts and ideas. We were briefed on the anti-COVID measures and I want to thank and congratulate you at the same time.

At the same time, I want to emphasize that the Republic of Albania has a health system, which already provides answers based on international conventions, which is a [ inaudible] joyful situation, and I want to underlining this. At the same time we have seen up close how almost the whole system works. We have noticed that best practices are being applied in Albanian hospitals. So, I would like to  you all for your work.

Definitely, we have also noticed that Albania has adapted new methods in the fight against COVID-19. Doctor Rahmet Guner is the one with the biggest contribution to the discovery of these methods and these procedures, which we will explain, and which have immensely helped in the efforts to improve the triggered by COVID -19 in Turkey and we think that Albania is suitable to practice these methods.

At the same time, I want to convey my most heartfelt thanks to you, Honorable Prime Minister, and to all the Albanian people, wishing you at the same time the best of success in this fight against COVID. At the same time, I would like to convey the thanks and greetings of the President of the Republic of Turkey on behalf of the delegation.

Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you very much for your words! Given that you have been working and constantly communicating with our experts for several days now, perhaps also to discuss this very positive experience, it would be suitable that a member of our Technical Committee of Experts now takes the floor. Since Dr. Mira Rakacolli has continuously followed, together with you, all this interaction that has taken place here in Tirana between the two Committees and is fully aware of all your visits and contacts, I am giving the floor to the doctor to provide to the public a concise overview of this.

Prof. Mira Rakacolli: Thank you Mr. Prime Minister!

For more than two days we have had the pleasure to discuss and share experiences with Turkish colleagues, members of the Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board of the Republic of Turkey, whom I take the opportunity to publicly thank for their dedication and professionalism in the discussions we have had in recent days. I would also like to introduce my dear colleagues by name. In addition to the professor who spoke, Professor Recep Oztürk, an infectious diseases specialist at the Medicol Hospital in Istanbul and who is a member of the Scientific Board for the treatment of pandemics in Turkey, we have here other Board members, including Professor Hatice Rahmet Guner, infectious disease specialist at Ankara Hospital, Professor Seval Isdesh, critical care anaesthetist at Ankara Hospital, Professor Ali Oxher, who is a Public Health Specialist at Malatya University in Turkey. Together with these honourable colleagues we took stock of the epidemiological situation in Albania, our testing policies, tracking and especially the treatment protocols, as well as the measures taken at different stages of pandemic in both our countries. We have looked closely at the documents prepared by us, such as the Action Plan at the beginning of the pandemic, such as our reopening policies, accompanied by very careful implementation protocols by citizens and businesses during this reopening and especially we have carefully reviewed our fall-winter strategy, on basis of which we are currently working to cope with the pandemic.

In addition to these documents, the honorable Turkish colleagues had the opportunity to closely visit the Hospital Center “Mother Teresa”, the Infectious Diseases Hospital, where some of COVID-19 patients are being treated and, at the same time, our National Emergency Center, seeing the reality there, the equipment we have at our disposal to deal with the pandemic and of course, discussing with doctors on the frontline of the fight against the pandemic, taking a closer look at the problems we face.

I can say that during these discussions we have found many common points regarding the measures we have taken, regarding the way we have handled the pandemic and especially about the way of treating the COVID-19 patients, for whom the honourable professor Hatice Rahmet Guner has expressed pleasure to speak and convey a message. Of course we also discussed the potential problems we may face in the future, because, as it is the case all over the world, there are still unknown and unpredictable problems, but we are trying to best manage them also thanks to the knowledge we have gained to date. One of these problems is our vaccination strategy. We have also discussed with Turkish colleagues and it is a strategy that we will unveil very soon.

The epidemiological situation in Albania, of course, has followed the global trend, with the number of fresh cases surging, but there has been a stable increase in the number of cases especially recently, as reflected in the indicators we report every day. There is a decrease in the number of hospitalized patients and a decrease in the number of new cases, which experts believe it is a result of the moderately stringent measures, which we in the Committee recommended few weeks ago.

Of course, we keep monitoring the situation very carefully, in order to continue to control it, as we have done so far and provide our recommendations based on the indicators.

Undoubtedly, such discussions will continue in the future, as we have done with other colleagues from other countries and I would like now to give the floor Dr. Hatice Rahmet Gyner, who has expressed her desire to express her opinion on the way our hospitalized patients are being treated in Albania.

*Prof. Hatice Rahmet Guner:  Honourable Mr. Prime Minister, once again thank you for your hospitality and generosity. I would also like to thank the Minister of Health.

Of course, developing a strategy aimed at containing the fresh cases and the COVID-19 related deaths and implementation of this strategy were on focus of our visit and talks we have had with our friends at Albania’s Technical Committee of Experts.

In the meantime, I would like to wholeheartedly thank the Committee members for their hospitality too. I won’t take too much time, because everything was already explained by the previous speaker. Once again, thank you.

PM Edi Rama: Thank you professor. I would like to give the floor to one of the heroes of this time, the head of the Epidemiology Department in our country, doctor Silva Bino, to comment on this common experience and perhaps provide some more details about the discussions on the testing strategy, the for the process of organizing the work and, in the meantime, I believe that in this process, after this experience sharing and exchange process, it will be good to learn about some concrete conclusions we would need to take into account in the coming period.

Silva Bino, the head of the Epidemiological Department at the Public Health Institute: Thank you! The exchanges and discussions with the Turkish colleagues have been really a great experience for us. We discussed all our measures, especially the initial measures and the impact they had. We discussed the early measures Albania took, including the total lockdown, testing and tracing of the cases and their contacts, which lead to a reduction of fresh cases and allowed us to focus on efforts to better prepare our hospitals and health structure to cope with the pandemic. This is the experience we shared with the visiting Turkish colleagues, who had applied almost same measures to contain the spread of the virus. We also shared experience on implementation of partial lockdown measures and their impact on stemming the spread of the infection, without affecting the country’s economic and social life. These are called moderately stringent measures.

As Professor Mira already said, we are constantly monitoring the situation and we notice a downward trend in the number of new cases that test positive for the coronavirus at a time when we have tripled the number of tests, even quadrupled recently, well beyond the 1% rate of the population per month. So something we have surpassed at this time. I am referring the number of tests performed mainly in public laboratories, especially with the introduction of rapid testing, which greatly shortens not only the time when the test results are produced and the diagnose is determined, but also speeds up the tracing, investigation and isolation of the infected individuals.

Likewise, we also discussed our experience in digitalization of our health system and with the Turkish colleagues we shared their experience in tracing contacts of COVID-19 patients via smart phone apps. These were indeed some very valuable experiences regarding the preventive measures. We also discussed a series of measures we have taken recently after the country’s reopening, mainly focusing on the way how restaurants, cafes, and schools should work,  similar elements introduced by the Turkish colleagues too. We will continue to consult and cooperate on the overall measures concerning public health.

PM Edi Rama: Thank you Silva! I won’t take too much of your time, but, of course, I would like to highlight that what we have done to date – and frankly saying I think it has been done quite well – it is the outcome of a team with the Technical Committee of Experts at its heart, starting with professor Tritan, one of the most hardworking people during this time; undoubtedly, doctor Najada is the icon of the fight against the pandemic and there is no Albanian citizen, who, regardless of their age and place of residence, don’t know her by name; doctors Xhorxhina, Andi, Eugena, all these people I am calling by their names because they have become somehow the members of the family of everyone during this period, but it is absolutely now that I don’t recognize or I don’t respect their highly esteemed titles. Without forgetting for a single moment Skender, the head of the National Emergency Centre. When I think what would have been the case and the situation we could have found ourselves in unless were not to reform and build the National Emergency service on completely different basis and infrastructure and, God forbid it, we were to be hit by the pandemic with the Emergency Centre in the situation we inherited, I can’t really imagine what would have happened, but, thank God, this is not the case. Of course, also the Director of the Public Health Institute, Albana Fico, who is part of the team and bears a special burden due to the role that the institution she leads has assumed in this phase. I would certainly also like to thank people in the Ministry of Health and the Minister herself who coordinates the efforts of the Technical Committee of Experts and the government.

I would like to thank our Turkish friends and express my gratitude for their contribution, because travelling has never been so difficult, let alone that they are all frontline doctors in their country. I am confident that this direct exchange of experience will be of great value for us. I am very pleased that their comments during this online meeting, as well as their opinion on the report positively evaluate our hospitals where the fight against the virus goes on, our guidelines and the way they are being implemented, our overall plan and its implementation. Our Turkish friends should know that their comments and advice are of particular importance in the eyes of the Albanian citizens, because Turkey is the destination of truth when it comes to the health system and hospitals. Listening to your direct opinion about our health structures and our work, this definitely encourages and motivates us a lot, even though we are aware that a lot remains to be done in terms of strengthening our health system. Despite the fact facilities and the conditions in some of our hospitals are on par with the hospitals in Turkey, and despite the fact that our doctors are absolutely ready to do the right thing, just like their colleagues do in Turkey, we know very well that there are still gaps we need to fill throughout our health system.

Perhaps the Turkish friends who are present here are not aware of this, but the ambassador, whom I see on the screen, is not only aware, but he has also provided his contribution to what I am saying.

I am really grateful to the team of doctors who treated a police officer who was injured during a protest few days ago. The police officer risked losing a part of the eye vision and after the initial surgical intervention to avoid this risk; his family and we demanded that he was transferred to Turkey to undergo a much more specialized surgery, a corneal transplant surgery about which we were informed a little bit earlier it has been successful. Of course, a special thanks goes to all those who made it possible and to the Ambassador himself who not only showed his readiness, but also helped to finalize transportation of the police officer in record time. This is definitely a reason for rejoice today, as the condition of the police officer was serious and the second surgery was no guarantee for better results. This was the reason he had to be flown to the Turkish hospital, where the surgery has turned out to be successful and this is absolutely great news for his family, his parents and everyone else. Thank you very much for this!

I am convinced that you will be in safe hands and you will all feel at home during the hours before flying back home to Turkey. I wish you and families stay healthy and safe and every success in this incredible war, where you have a large part of the fate of the people in your hand.

Thank you very much!

*Simultaneous interpretation