Berisha with medical students: Healthcare took the hardest hits in the last 4 years

The leader of the Democratic Party, Sali Berisha, held a meeting with medical students.

Berisha focused on the current situation in Albania, including the economy, the state of families, and even healthcare. The leader of the Democrat Party said that healthcare has taken the hardest hit in the last 4 years, due to a massive exodus of doctors.

Berisha then referred to the socio-economic conditions of Albanians today.

Berisha: If you close your eyes for a moment and stop at the current situation, Albania is in a state of upheaval that in many aspects exceeds our imagination. Wherever you start, except for the concrete of narcoeurs, in every other aspect this country is in turmoil.

I'm coming from Gjirokastra. The university is facing a dramatic decrease in students. 80 percent of graduates leave for various reasons, but they leave the country.

If we take healthcare, in my memory, healthcare today has a degradation in Albania that in many aspects is close to the 1960s.

In which ones specifically are you medical students? Today we have 4 times fewer doctors than the EU average.

In 2013 we had one doctor for 600 inhabitants, today we have one doctor for 1100 inhabitants. The EU has one doctor for 300-350 inhabitants. Here we are.

But if we focus on other aspects, the Kukës hospital, built with taxpayers' money, the new 3 million euro hospital, without a doctor. To operate on the appendix, there is a humanist doctor who has left his number, a surgeon who comes and operates at the Kukës hospital for a fee, of course.

Meanwhile, other hospitals are facing an extraordinary shortage of specialists. Everything reminds me of the 1960s, when pediatricians first started appearing in districts because there were no pediatricians.

Healthcare has taken the hardest hit in the last 4 years. The exodus of doctors has become massive.

You are again people who have studied physiology, biochemistry, and chronic hunger has appeared in a very disturbing form.

Chronic hunger, you know, is hunger in which a person cannot meet the protein minimum, cannot meet the components for the functioning of their body, and then takes these from their own tissues.

An independent UNICEF study shows that 21 percent of families cannot feed their children more than 2 meals. 21 percent!

Pensioners, who number about 760 thousand, 57 percent of them receive a pension lower than 170 euros per month. But you understand yourself, pensioners are also the citizens with the greatest need for medicines.

Meanwhile, today prices in this country have increased faster and more than in any other country.

If you could rent an apartment for 150-200 euros in 2013, I mean, today you need 500-600 euros for the same area. If before I got a kilo of bread for 400 lek, today I get 900-1000 lek. The same goes for meat and other products.

I am still focusing on this element because it is very important. Pensioners, who in 2013 received an average pension of 143 thousand lekë, if the government had respected and helped them cope with price increases, today they would have had a pension not of 170 thousand lekë, but of 390 thousand lekë.