The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine continues to discuss ways to fight corruption in the system of medical and social expert commissions (MSEK) against the background of the prosecutor-doctor scandal, and the Kharkiv Anti-Corruption Center (KHAC) decided to conduct its own investigation. The goal was to study the declarations of MSEK doctors in the Kharkiv region, in particular, heads of inter-district, regional and specialized commissions.
Despite the fact that the structure of the MSEK remains quite closed, the HAC managed to find and analyze 120 financial declarations of doctors working in Kharkiv and in the regions of the region, such as Balakliiskyi, Izyumskyi, Kupianskyi. The declarations of doctors working in specialized commissions for various areas of medicine, including psychiatry, cardiology, and diseases of the cerebrovascular system, were also examined. All these data were publicly available on the official website of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NACP).
The results of the study turned out to be unexpected: out of 120 analyzed declarations for 2023, more than half of doctors, namely 62 people, receive pensions. The reasons for the appointment of pensions are not exactly known, since it can be either an old-age pension or a disability pension. According to the law, doctors do not have the right to receive a pension based on years of service, as happens, for example, with prosecutors, because in this case they would have to leave medical practice. Only a few doctors directly indicated that they receive a disability pension. In addition, 120 declarations also revealed data on pension payments for 13 family members of doctors, some of whom receive disability pensions.
For a better understanding of the context of the situation, it is worth citing statistics: according to “Economic Truth”, at the beginning of 2022, 2.72 million people with disabilities were recorded in Ukraine, which is 6.6% of the total population. As a result of the full-scale war, this number increased to 3 million people, or 7.5% of the population.
