Thirteen of the seventeen members of the Medical Council to the Prime Minister, the pandemic advisory body, resigned on Friday. We will know the detailed justification at the beginning of this week, but it seems that the decisive factor was the fact that Barbara Nowak, the education superintendent, was left as the curator of education, whose resignation was demanded by experts and the lack of determination in the work on the Act on Employee Testing.
The Medical Council no longer wanted to legitimize inactivity
Published Jan. 17, 2022 08:14
Fot. Getty Images/iStockphoto
It has been known for a long time that members of the Medical Council are increasingly frustrated by the government's ignoring their recommendations and advice. There have also been questions for a long time - mainly in the medical community - about the sense of continuing to work as government advisers, since the government takes decisions that are clearly at odds with the standpoint of experts. The Council has repeatedly - and for months - recommended, for example, the introduction of compulsory vaccinations for certain professional groups and the use of covid certificates for internal use, which could increase the percentage of vaccinated Poles. The politicians of the United Right, however, did not want to and did not intend to make such decisions.
In recent weeks, the Medical Council has obtained a political declaration that the Law and Justice will introduce a law in the Sejm, allowing employers to send employees for covid tests. Since the vaccinated and convalescents would be exempted from testing, this would mean that the act - not directly, of course - would allow the employer to verify the covid status of employees. The bill had its first reading in mid-December, a public hearing was held at the beginning of January, during which the Health Commission was an arena for four hours of anti-vaccination and people questioning the pandemic and scientific knowledge, and last Tuesday, MPs completed work on the bill, adopting it together with with corrections. It seemed like it would go to second reading - but it didn't. Reason? A split in the PiS club and a visit of a group of deputies questioning vaccinations against COVID-19 in the Prime Minister's Office, where they were received and - as they emphasized with satisfaction - "carefully listened to" by the PiS president, Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. They did not hear the promise to postpone the work on the law - but in fact such a decision was made. The next session of the Sejm is at the end of January and the government spokesman says that the law on employee testing is a "worldview" law, explaining the lack of discipline in this matter.
The Medical Council published its position on Monday, in which it demanded the dismissal of the probation officer Barbara Nowak from the Małopolska office, who called the vaccination against COVID-19 an experiment (incidentally, Nowak's resignation was also demanded by Minister of Health Adam Niedzielski). However, Nowak did not lose her position - she was reprimanded by the voivode and was forced by the minister of education to publicly repent for her statements.
It is hardly surprising that in this situation the majority of members of the Medical Council decided that they could not take responsibility for decisions that were beyond their control, which would result in thousands more deaths due to COVID-19 and blocking access to treatment for the remaining patients.
The decision was made - everything points to it - literally on the threshold of the fifth wave of the pandemic. The government announced a change in the formula of the Medical Council - the new proposal is to be developed by the Minister of Health.
