Prague That morning it was Friday for hematologist Jan Blatný like everyone else. During the morning, however, it was already clear that Roman Prymula would not stand a night visit to the closed restaurant Rio’s. The phone rang, the prime minister called. The moment Blatný got into a car at the end of last week and left Brno for the Office of the Government, his entry into the big political scene began, where the director is a covid who has already taken over two health ministers. The new head of the department, Jan Blatný (for YES), has thirty years of experience as a doctor, but he enters a foreign arena of tense political emotions.
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The 50-year-old doctor has an unquestionable professional reputation, praise sounds everywhere. Until joining the ministry, he ran a purely children’s hospital for patients with severe blood clotting disorders, a unique and internationally recognized workplace at one of the largest hospitals in the country, the University Hospital Brno (FNB).
“He is an excellent pediatrician and deputy. The situation is very difficult for anyone now, but I have known him for twenty-five years and I am convinced that if he is a minister, he will be the right person, “said Jaroslav Štěrba, director of the FNB, to Blatný. It was he who recommended his deputy to Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (YES) when he himself rejected the offer of a seat after Prymul.
It’s extra uncomfortable, the frustrated public ignores the government’s measures, and the pungent taste of an almost permanent campaign ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections adds to the nervousness of the covid itself. After all, President Miloš Zeman warned Blatný on his appointment yesterday.
“Unlike the comforting community of hemophilia, for example, politics is an extremely cruel affair. The minister is exposed to attacks that the scientist cannot even imagine. I even told you that you were moving from the park to the jungle, “Zeman told a new cabinet member.
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Sophisticatedly calm to shy, Blatný speaks of himself as a consistent non-partisan; according to his own words, he has not been very interested in the political circumstances of the covid crisis. He just accepted the challenge when it came. “A year ago, I took a position in the management of one of the two largest hospitals in the country, so now the hospital is even bigger,” he said, adding that he was at the head of the most shelled resort.
Hemophilia is a disease about which there is not much awareness in the Czech Republic, this also applies to Blatný, a leading expert on this disease, whose domain must now be covid. Not that he did not encounter the infection in practice, the FNB was already designated by the Moravian center for the care of covid patients during the spring waves, Blatný knows the effects on the healthcare system as a first-hand deputy hospital director.
New to politics
Even the opposition does not deny him professional qualities, but he will have to succeed in the new discipline, because political dexterity and foresight is quite different from working with data, facts and other experts. The Brno native is not used to the world of high politics with sharp teeth and elbows – this is also evidenced by the fact that few people in the Chamber of Deputies can say that they have a phone to him. Or that she knows him at all.
“Decent and intelligent,” comes most often from those who have come into contact with the new minister in the past. And to the supplementary question, if he can handle devastating gusts, what is so high? “The task is so difficult that it is not possible to put one’s hand in the fire for someone. But Associate Professor Blatný has the prerequisites, “said ODS deputy and doctor Bohuslav Svoboda.
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For Blatný, it is not just a professional transfer, after a lifelong connection with Moravia, his new mission also takes him to Prague, even though he was already experienced abroad, he worked in Ireland for several years.
Born in Prostějov, he graduated from university in Brno, where in 2005 he joined the FNB at the Department of Pediatric Hematology, where he later became the head and head of the unique Children’s Hospital. As an expression of the international appreciation of his work, he was commissioned last year to organize a prestigious EAHAD congress on hemophilia in the Czech Republic.
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