Turkmenistan: President Reprimands Health Minister

Simon Bradshaw

Turkmenistan's Ministry of Health in Ashgabat, July 2010

Turkmenistan's minister of health has been reprimanded by the president for "unsatisfactory performance," the opposition website gundogar.org reported, citing the presidential news service.

President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, himself a trained dentist and former health minister, issued a strict reprimand to Kurbanmamed Ilyasov, current minister of health and the medical industry, for "allowing shortcomings in compliance with labor discipline."

The dressing-down took place in real time, on one of the government video conferences that the Turkmen leader is increasingly using to control his subordinates across the country.

Lest you think the public rebuke might be related to Turkmenistan's actual poor health care system, as documented in reports such as the 2010 study by Doctors without Borders (which has since left the country in frustration with the bureaucracy) -- it wasn't about medicine.

Instead, Berdymukhamedov criticized his hapless health minister for failing to build yet another set of health facilities on time, and for falling behind the break-neck pace that the Turkmen dictator has set for constructing dazzling new state-of-the-art clinics.

The minister was warned that if he did not shape up immediately, he would be released from his duties.

Ilyasov was appointed as minister in April 2010, taking the place of Ata Serdarov, who was sent to serve as ambassador to Armenia. (He happens to be President Berdymukhamedov's cousin.) Previously, Ilyasov served as minister of tourism and sports.

This prompts us to ask: is there a doctor in the house?