We all feel great concern for doctors these days. We are aware that in case we get sick the few doctors who are not infected with COVID-19 will not be able to help us. We need doctors the most, but we left them unprotected, fighting against the coronavirus without essential protection equipment. And we left the doctors unprotected because they are silent. 

The doctors have to study hard and for many years before receiving their diploma. Three years of studying economics at the Agricultural University cannot compare with seven years of neurosurgery at the University of Medicine. However, the doctors choose to remain silent despite going through so many hardships. 

They are on the first line treating COVID-19 patients without adequate costumes and equipment, but they remain silent.  They do not get any fair compensation if they get sick at work, yet they keep silent. They were promised salary increase, but did not receive any, still, they keep silent. The increasing number of infected doctors places the burden on the few medical staff, but the medical staff remains silent. The doctors are scolded,   humiliated, ignored, but they remain silent. 

Probably many of the people who had to deal with the medical system before the pandemic felt upset, angry, or disappointed with doctors and nurses. Honestly, who of us did not feel humbled by the fact that we were asked to pay extra for the doctor’s effort. If it was a surgery, we had to pay separately to the anesthesiologist. In the case of a bed stricken patient, we had to offer something to the nurse, to help with the cleaning, and if we felt bad – we had to pay for better medications. All this happened despite the fact that we had a health insurance policy that guaranteed, on paper, all rights. The rights were ill just as we were. We have done nothing to defend this right and ensure better healthcare. We stayed silent.

We didn’t ask why a doctor accepts our tips, be it 5 or 50 euros. After studying for seven years and working for 10 to 20 years, doctors operate, fix bones, clear intestines, remove kidney stones, remove cancers, smelling our sweat and fears. They collect us on the streets, collapsed and full of vomit, urinated, drunk or heavily coughing. However, they accept this so-called gratuity silently and even with embarrassment. The nurse who does not sleep for months, who makes minute infusions is paid a miserable salary and is allowed an extra gauze as recompense.

Not everyone is corrupt in the medical system, but also not all are transparent, that is for sure. Our silence and blindness have largely advanced money-loving doctors, who associated themselves with hypocritical politicians and oligarchs sharing rotten values. The system finally came under the control of people with medical diplomas, but under oath of obscure parties and their corrupt criminal political leaders. The public goods in the hospitals came to generate income for a handful of profiteers while the honest doctors were pushed out of the system.

What followed was doctors’ and medical workers’ massive exodus. Plenty of doctors and nurses with a degree taken in Moldova are working all around the world. They tell us now how they are respected as professionals in Italy, Switzerland, France, and Spain. They are tremendously glad that they have escaped the corruption in the Moldovan medical system, which reduced them to silence.

The doctors’ silence has not settled now. It is an old, deep, almost genetic silence. It is the silence of the ignored professional. We caused this silence by tipping 5 euros to ensure our own personal interest, remaining deaf to the grief and agony of the system. The time has come now for all to pay. We have nowhere to run and we all face each other: corrupt politicians, disappointed doctors, and impoverished patients.

We must all together work on a common plan on how to save ourselves. We should make the first step and speak out, for the sake of the honest doctors and against the corrupt leaders. We ought to leave behind not only the COVID-19 pandemic, but also the virus of corruption.