“24 Hours”: Why is health minister Asena Serbezova depriving of robotic surgery a huge city such as Burgas ?

– Heart and Brain claims that they have been waiting half a year, since November 2021, to implement da Vinci in the seaside town – meanwhile the minister was giving permission to entire hospitals
– The administrative procedure continues after the latest clarifications of April 20, the Ministry of Health responds

In Burgas, Bulgaria’s fourth largest city, which is suffering from a lack of doctors of various specialties and modern equipment, the latest generation of da Vinci surgical system with four articulated arms is on stand-by waiting for permission.
The robot is used in areas such as urology, abdominal (colorectal) surgery and thoracic surgery. The advantages of robot-assisted minimally invasive interventions have been empirically proven in the last 20 years: faster patient recovery, shorter hospital stay, less trauma and blood loss, and faster return to daily activity and working capacity for patients. The technology has better precision and even the external scars after such surgery are smaller. There are more than 5000 robots installed worldwide in more than 64 countries. In Bulgaria they are less than a dozen.

“The fact that the citizend of Southeastern Bulgaria (708 791 people according to NSI,2020) continue to sign up on lists and hope to wait for an opportunity for modern treatment with robotic surgery in Sofia does not worry anyone in the Ministry of Health. An application under Article 37B(2) of the Health Care Act for authorisation of high-tech activities at the Heart and Brain Hospital in Burgas was submitted to the Ministry of Health on 30 November 2021. The time limit for adjudication of the application is two months and expired in February this year. Despite our kind reminder of March 7, 2022, after all deadlines for the administrative procedure have expired, the Ministry of Health deliberately continues to withhold the authorization for robotic surgery, while the list of patients for urological, abdominal and thoracic robotic surgeries is growing and now exceeds 50 patients”, said Zhivko Kolev – Administrative Director of Heart and Brain Hospital, Burgas. “I can’t understand what the Minister wants from the patients” – the administrative director cannot contain his indignation.

The full article is available here in Bulgarian.