Dear Gintautas:
This is not the “Lithuanian” health system but the legacy of the Soviet/communist system!

To provide evidence of much broader applicability of your very sad experience, I will briefly describe the tragic case of my Mother dying in a small town in Poland in 2003.

My Mother had a sudden cardiovascular event; an ambulance was called and it took that ambulance about two hours to arrive from a hospital located 25 km away; soon we realized why it took so long!

Some 6 people (sic!) arrived in that ambulance and all of them were under the visible influence of alcohol, the most intoxicated were the most important people in the ambulance: doctor and driver.

The crew eventually managed to put my Mother on the stretcher but one of the drunken bearers collapsed while carrying my Mother, almost dropping her on the ground! Then the ambulance drove off very slowly driven by a drunken driver. After spending several hours in hospital, my Mother passed away.

Rushed from Canada (I visited my Parents very frequently), I had seen my Mother just a couple of weeks before that fatal cardiovascular event. At that time she was in the same hospital with some 9 older patients in the same one room. The food served there was awful, so we used to bring our own food. I did not pursue any further actions to improve my Mother’s wellbeing there because she was about to be discharged home soon.

Immediately after my Mother’s funeral I did a bit of investigation into the (very new) possibilities of suing the hospital for malpractice and the criminal behavior (intoxication of the ambulance crew).

All my relatives and friends were strongly against any action against the hospital for fear of retaliation, e.g. poisoning when they find themselves in the hospital. They scolded me: “you will leave for Canada but we have to live here”. I conceded.

In the postwar period, my Mother was involved with the Anti-Communist Underground fighting for freedom of both Poland and Lithuania: “Za Wolnosc Wasza i Nasza”, Polish for “For Freedom of Yours and Ours”.

Gintautas, what you described was not the “Lithuanian” health system but the legacy of the Soviet/communist system!

Valdas Samonis
Toronto