Renata Kaznowska: It's been a difficult year for health care tasks

Let's try to evaluate 2023 from the point of view of public health, in the context of local government.

It's been a very difficult year, but I have to admit that it was easier than the previous one, when the war in Ukraine also overlapped with the pandemic. In Warsaw, one and the other resonated in an unbelievably strong way. We had a very large number of refugees from Ukraine in Warsaw. We estimate that more than a million people passed through Warsaw's train stations and used our assistance, including medical assistance. It was a huge challenge for us and a very difficult year. This one was a bit calmer, but all the time there is really a lot going on in health care, starting with our financial troubles resulting from the National Health Fund contracts, which do not match the actual cost of running the facilities. Increases in the valuation of services are completely out of line, and this is our perennial problem, and this year has not solved the problem. It's even getting worse, especially since there is tremendous wage pressure when it comes to health care and medical staff, nursing staff.

There are challenges arising all the time from pandemics and necessary vaccinations. Now we are already preparing for the next mutation and for more vaccinations. We are fortunate that a great number of medical facilities are our local government facilities, where we are the forming body. This includes 10 municipal hospitals and more than 120 outpatient clinics.

We support health care through various types of preventive health programs, so there is very, very much to do in this area, and we also have our successes, such as winning the Healthy Cities Index for the second year in a row, largely due to the fact that we are implementing a great many health programs and are still thinking of new ones. We have already started a pneumococcal vaccination program this year for people with oncological burdens. We have launched a pilot program for children with obesity. We are carrying out vaccinations against HPV, as well as against influenza, because still from infants through seniors these are vaccinations funded by the city budget. We also vaccinate people in homelessness crisis against the flu.