Macedonian Minister Urged to Quit Over Girl's Death

About a thousand people staged a protest at noon on Tuesday in Skopje demanding the resignation of the Minister of Health, Nikola Todorov, over the death of nine-year-old Tamara Dimovska.

Under the slogan "Red Card for Minister Todorov," protesters sought the minster's resignation because the girl died while waiting for the Health Fund to decide whether to pay for her treatment in Turkey at a cost of 30,000 euro.

The march was organized on social networks and supported by civic society groups, including the Helsinki Committee for Human rights in Macedonia.

Maja Parnadzieva-Zmejkova, one of the directors of the Health Fund, whose resignation protesters also sought, resigned ahead of the protest on Tuesday.

Protesters seek the resignation of another director of the Health Fund, Xhemali Mehazi, and the members of both doctors' committees that denied approval for the payout.

The Helsinki Committee filed charges against Todorov for abuse of power and authority in the case on Friday. It says that, 20 days before her death, Todorov said the Ministry of Health and the Health Fund would cover the costs for the treatment.

"With that he? misled the public and Tamara's family? with information that the state would pay for the treatment. He did not have any legal authority to do so," the Helsinki Committee's president, Uranija Pirovska, told BIRN on Friday.

Last Thursday, a citizens' platform, Ajde, organized a protest in front of the Ministry of Health, wearing white masks and dark clothes to symbolically seek responsibility for Tamara's death. 

Tamara died on 9 February. She was suffering from a severe curvature of the spine and died awaiting approval for coverage of the cost of treatment. Two years ago she had her first...