The conflict between Acting Health Minister Ulana Suprun and her opponents in parliament escalated on April 3 as parliament’s Health Care Committee approved a resolution asking that the government dismiss her.
The resolution will now be put on the agenda of parliament for voting.
Ever since her appointment in 2016, Suprun has been widely criticized by members of the medical establishment for planning seismic reforms that would shake up the way Ukrainian health care system is financed and structured.
But with this new development, together with intensifying criticism from some parliament members, the conflict is aggravating.
Suprun, however, says she has no plans to leave the ministry.
The Health Care Committee said it was not satisfied with Suprun’s report for 2017. Head of the Committee Olga Bogomolets, a lawmaker with the 135-member Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction in parliament and a longtime opponent of Suprun, said the health care ministry fulfilled less than 30 percent of the goals they had set for the year.
The committee then voted to approve a decree to declare Suprun’s performance unsatisfactory and recommend that the Cabinet of Ministers to fire her. The decree was originally submitted to the parliament in January by Opposition Bloc lawmakers Oleksandr Vilkul and Ihor Shurma. Now that the committee approved it, it will be put on the parliament’s agenda.
Of the 12 members of the committee, seven members voted in favor of the decision, four abstained, and only one lawmaker – Oksana Korchynska from the 21-member Radical Party – voted against it.
Suprun says she sees the committee’s vote as a good thing.
“I and my team consider this initiative as acknowledgment of the effectiveness of the start of the health care reform, and I’m grateful to all of the people who have written to me and supported me,” Suprun was quoted as saying by Dzerkalo Tyzhnya news website.
She added that she has no plans to leave her position now.
Suprun was appointed an acting health minister in August 2016. She developed a health care reform bill that was adopted in October and came into force in January. She also delegated the state procurement of some medicine, including vaccines, to international organizations, and introduced Dobri Liky (Good Medicine) reimbursement program in an attempt to cut corruption in state medicine procurement.
Bogomolets accuses Suprun of botching the early stage of the health care reform, leaving some hospitals without medical supplies, as well as underfunding cancer programs and failing to increase doctors’ low wages.
