Hungarian hospitals struggle to keep temperatures low in summer heat, government says things aren’t so bad

Just like in the rest of Europe, the continued rise of the average temperature – especially in the summer months – has presented a challenge for Hungary too on several fronts, healthcare being one of them. In mid-August, as yet another heatwave alert was issued for the whole country, it became clear that just like in previous years, many hospitals continue to struggle with the ability to properly cool the air in operating rooms and wards, including the Intensive Care units.

Speaking earlier to 444, Tamás Svéd, secretary general of the Hungarian Medical Chamber (MOK), said that air conditioning is not only essential in operating theatres, but "the conditions in the wards are also inhumane, whereas the patients’ recovery – and the healing of their surgical wounds – is significantly slowed down if they have to lie in a 30 °C ward".

In response to the almost daily reports of the challenging situations in hospitals throughout the summer months, Péter Magyar, president of the Tisza party announced in mid-August that he would start touring hospitals to measure the temperature in wards and operating theatres.

Among the several examples from the last two months which prompted Magyar’s tour was that of the Bethesda Children's Hospital, which in July announced that the special air-conditioning system in their operating theatre at the otorhinolaryngology department has given out, making the scheduling of surgeries uncertain. At the time, they launched a (successful) fundraising campaign to gather the 10 million forints (25 500 euros) needed to repair their systems.

The AC at Szent László Hospital’s transplant department also broke down in the midst of a July heatwave, just as it did at János Hospital’s orthopedic trauma department, where they were forced to postpone surgeries since the temperature very quickly rose to above 30 C in both the operating theatres and the wards.

Magyar first went to the Szent János Hospital, where he described the conditions as "medieval", and a few days later checked in from the Péterfy Sándor Street Hospital in Budapest,

where he said the entrance door had been chained to prevent him and the TV crews present at the scene from entering, but he was later allowed in and measured the temperature at 38.4 degrees Celsius.

In a live video report from the hospital, Magyar said that he believed the door had been chained on "orders from above" to prevent them from showing the public the conditions inside. That same afternoon, Péter Magyar also issued a statement about the hospital visit in which he wrote, “There were doctors who cried and pleaded with us not to leave them on their own, but to inform the public about the conditions under which they are fighting to save lives day after day.”

In response to Magyar’s claims, the management of the Péterfy Sándor Street Hospital issued a statement. According to this, they fully cooperated with Magyar, who was later allowed in and ended up measuring not the temperature of the air, but of various surfaces. The hospital claimed that by doing so, Magyar had undermined the public’s confidence in the healthcare system and in the institution in question.

On August 17th Péter Magyar announced that he would be filing a complaint related to the lack of air-conditioning in hospitals which he said qualifies as an aggravated case of professional misconduct and a case of professional negligence resulting in the death of several people.

According to a statement by the Tisza Party, the politician is filing a complaint because “the authorities in charge and the heads of certain health institutions have failed to carry out the mandatory disinfection, maintenance and repair of the air-conditioning equipment in hospitals, and to observe and enforce basic hygiene rules in Hungarian health institutions, as well as to supply hospital bathrooms with disinfectant and soap.”

The government and the Directorate General for Public Procurement and Supply (Közbeszerzési és Ellátási Főigazgatóság or KEF), which is responsible for managing the hospitals' procurements, announced at the end of July, following a series of breakdowns in multiple institutions, that they had begun checking the systems and were launching a comprehensive programme to repair the cooling systems in around 20 institutions. They promised to spend a total of 1.3 billion HUF on repairs.

State Secretary for Health Péter Takács said that despite the situation, they had been well prepared for the summer, with only a small part of the healthcare system affected by such problems.

It’s not the government’s fault, and things aren’t that bad anyway

Back in 2019, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyás stated that "Operating theatres must be air-conditioned, and it is the task of the responsible ministry to ensure this in large hospitals and wherever major operations are carried out" – 24.hu has reminded.

In his 2021 report, ombudsman Ákos Kozma also stressed the importance of having air conditioners in hospitals. Also in 2021, a survey conducted by the National Healthcare Services Centre showed that 92% of the operating theatres in the institutions it manages have air conditioning.

On the other hand, a 2019 survey by the Association of Hungarian Hospitals found that 33 percent of operating theatres, 41 percent of intensive care units and 98 percent of wards had no air conditioning at all, and only 9 percent of the outpatient examination rooms were equipped with an AC unit.

Oncologist Miklós Kásler, who was the previous Orbán government's minister responsible for healthcare, responded to the current situation by saying that he used to perform 10-hour operations in 50-degree temperatures 30 years ago.

"Professor, the question is not whether it is possible to operate in 50 degrees Celsius, but whether the patient will survive" – András Kulja responded. The Tisza Party MEP – himself a doctor turned politician – noted that the success of an operation may actually depend on this, since on the one hand, the patient's circulation can be properly maintained more safely at the right temperature, and on the other hand, the risk of infection during surgery increases significantly if even a drop of sweat falls from the doctor's forehead onto the patient.

Government spokeswoman Eszter Vitályos reacted to the debate in a social media post, saying among others that: "The government is spending two and a half times more on healthcare than the left-wing Gyurcsány government did in 2010. According to Vitályos, a vast number of improvements have been made to the Hungarian healthcare system in recent years, including the renovation of 91 hospitals and 54 clinics, and "one of the biggest wage increase programmes in recent decades".

When asked for his opinion on the suffering of the patients and the postponed surgeries in several hospitals due to the broken air-conditioners at the end of July, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén burst into a hearty laugh, and told the reporter he found it absurd that they would bring this up at a time when the Prime Minister is involved in peace negotiations so a Third World War could be avoided.

Speaking on the issue of air conditioning at Hungarian hospitals on ATV's "Egyenes beszéd" programme last week, Péter Takács, State Secretary for Healthcare at the Ministry of Interior said:

“If it were up to me, and if I could do it, I would install air-conditioning in each and every ward, but this is simply not realistic, not just in Hungary, but all across Europe. In Germany for example, only 60 percent of intensive care units are air-conditioned, even though their financial resources are not the same as ours.”

When the question of how much the Hungarian state spends on healthcare relative to the GDP was raised, the state secretary said it was difficult to compare countries because of the differing methodologies. "I'm not saying we are in the top half of the EU, but we are far from being last. Instead, our spending relative to our GDP puts us in the bottom half of the middle section," he explained.