SKOPJE -- Allegations that cancer drugs were stolen from an oncology clinic in Skopje and sold on the black market have prompted an angry demonstration in the North Macedonia capital in which protestors demanded justice for affected patients.
Demonstrators threw eggs and left traces of "bloody" palms and wrote "murderers" on government buildings on September 4 after the Prosecutor-General's Office announced that an investigation was being opened into allegations made in recent media reports.
"For a person who is fighting for his life, every day is important, and in the end some directors and ministers will be found to have destroyed his life," one demonstrator who recently lost his mother to breast cancer told RFE/RL. "We had a lot of such cases in health care, and no one was responding."
The Prosecutor-General's Office on September 2 announced its investigation after media reports that said some drugs on which cancer patients depend are difficult to find and that employees of one Skopje clinic were caught reselling the drugs on the black market.
On September 4, the office said that it was investigating three cases of attempted drug theft and bribery related to the oncology clinic and that computers had been seized from the facility and interrogations were being conducted.
Once case has already resulted in criminal proceedings and the Prosecutor-General's Office said there could be more.
The Health Ministry and the oncology clinic gave assurances at a joint press conference on September 4 that adequate care is being provided to cancer patients but that they cannot be held responsible for what happened before "their time."
The organizers of the protest demanded that the last three health ministers take responsibility for the alleged cancer-drug thefts because the abuses have being going on for a long time.
The Social Democratic Party (SDSM) won the Balkan country's general elections in January 2022 and heads a coalition government along with two ethnic Albanian parties.