“Hungarian doctors are like pilots who have to find the runway without beacon-lights”

In the spring, war conditions broke out in British healthcare due to the epidemic, but open data management managed to help settle the questions. Out of the 62,000 victims, 46,000 died during the first wave. Therefore, it is a huge problem that the detailed statistics are kept secret in Hungary, two intensive care specialists working in Great Britain, Tamás Leiner and Tamás Szakmány, told VálaszOnline.

At Leiner’s Hospital, for example, every employee receives an email every day stating how many patients have contracted the infection at that hospital. They know exactly what the mortality rate is and where among invasively ventilated patients, writes 444.

According to Szakmány, it would be good if the staff of hospitals could know the quality of care, the number of beds, nurses, and ventilators compared to other institutions. This would make it easier to decide if a method they use was really working or if they are doing something better somewhere else.

“Without it, colleagues in Hungary are like a pilot who has to find the runway without beacon-lights. You may get lucky, but in intensive care, it is worth minimising the luck factor.”

No one in Hungary knows what percentage of infected patients in the intensive care unit or on ventilation die, let alone broken down according to hospitals nationwide. The Health Professional College, established by the Ministry of Human Resources, sent a special call to prevent intensive care physicians from providing data to anyone outside the government.

Therefore, Hungarians can only rely on one story at a time, for example, that according to János Szlávik, the chief physician of the South Pest Central Hospital, the mortality rate among ventilated patients in their own ward is 40-45 per cent. Or on an interview with paediatrician Hunor Novák which he did with a professor working in intensive care asking for anonymity. He said that