Polish hospital demands over 18,000 euros from journalist Katsiaryna Vadanosava

Jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Vadanosa­va received notice of a law­suit in Pol­ish court: a hos­pi­tal is demand­ing pay­ment of 78,313.99 zlo­tys. As the jour­nal­ist shared on her Face­book page, she was billed for her mother’s oper­a­tion, resus­ci­ta­tion, and post-mortem pro­ce­dures.

Kat­siary­na Vadanosa­va. Pho­to: Per­son­al Face­book page

In Decem­ber 2025, Neli Vadanosa­va was hos­pi­tal­ized in seri­ous con­di­tion fol­low­ing a stroke. Due to a bureau­crat­ic error, she remained with­out med­ical insur­ance. Despite the fact that Katsiaryna’s moth­er was in the process of obtain­ing inter­na­tion­al pro­tec­tion in Poland and should have been insured by law, her data was not entered into the data­base of the Office for For­eign­ers due to admin­is­tra­tive error. BYSOL imme­di­ate­ly announced a fundrais­ing cam­paign to help the Vadanosa­va fam­i­ly.

In spring 2026, Kat­siary­na report­ed that the fam­i­ly had man­aged to prove the error and the bill would be paid by the state.

“I was con­vinced that the Office for For­eign­ers sent them [the hos­pi­tal] the same doc­u­ments it sent me,” Kat­siary­na explains. “I received a let­ter from the office on March 26 stat­ing that pay­ment is being sub­mit­ted to Petra Med­ica, and that my moth­er was insured at the time of her stroke and death. Soon after that I trans­ferred the remain­ing fundrais­ing mon­ey back to BYSOL.

I con­tact­ed a won­der­ful lawyer. She promised to help me defend myself. Because I don’t have 78,000 zlo­tys. More­over, I shouldn’t have to pay them. The Office for For­eign­ers acknowl­edged its respon­si­bil­i­ty, acknowl­edged it was tak­ing care of my moth­er, that she had insur­ance. More­over, the let­ter the hos­pi­tal sent to court con­tains false state­ments.”

The court also demand­ed that the jour­nal­ist pro­vide a birth cer­tifi­cate, which must be sub­mit­ted with­in two weeks. Kat­siary­na, who con­tin­ues under­go­ing can­cer treat­ment her­self, rushed to obtain it:

“Today between an IV drip and an injec­tion I ran to the Civ­il Reg­istry Office to file an appli­ca­tion for plac­ing my Belaru­sian birth cer­tifi­cate on Pol­ish record, with­out which the court won’t accept it. It takes a month. I cried in the reg­istry office from despair.

I’ll keep fight­ing, of course, what choice do I have, but I’m so tired of liv­ing through all of this! I’m just tired, hon­est­ly. I want to dis­ap­pear.”