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Czech hospitals have a lack of organ donors which is limiting the number of life-saving transplants undertaken, the ctk news agency reports. According to Eva Pokorna, a chief transplant surgeon at Prague’s IKEM heart clinic, this is largely because hospitals are unable to spare the finances to employ specially trained staff who would manage the agenda and negotiate the issue with the families of potential donors. According to Czech law it is the duty of individual doctors to broach the subject with relatives and they often lack the time and space to do so. Last year IKEM conducted 50 heart transplants and there are 114 others on the waiting list. The Czech Republic is half-way down a list of European organ donors with 19 organ donors per 1 million inhabitants as compared to Croatia which tops the list with 36 donors.

Czech police sometimes have such poor equipment that they believe it could limit their ability to do their jobs and endanger the public, according to a police union survey quoted by Czech Radio. Officers in Moravia and in areas near the German border most frequently complained about lacking clothing needed for specialised operations and other equipment. Some said they had to buy shoes, thermal underwear, torches and other items out of their own money.

A dispute over deputy ministerial positions involving the two main parties in the new government was not resolved by a meeting of the parties’ leaders on Monday. Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka of the Social Democrats is insisting that a tradition of deputy ministers coming from the other parties in a coalition be respected. However, ANO boss Andrej Babiš is reluctant to accept a Social Democrat candidate for the post of deputy minister for taxation; he has also questioned the reputations of other Social Democrat deputy ministerial nominees. After Monday’s talks, Mr. Sobotka said 30 percent of what divided the two parties remained to be ironed out. Talks are due to continue on Friday, two days after the three-party government is appointed.

The Ministry of the Environment hugely increased its spending on consultancy and legal services during a period when it was helmed by Civic Democrat minister Tomáš Chalupa, the Supreme Audit Office said on Monday. The ministry spent CZK 48 million on such services in 2012, twice as much as the previous year, the agency said. A current spokesperson for the ministry said savings had been made on salaries under Mr. Chalupa and that the consultants had been hired to carry out checks on an environmental operational programme, which channels EU funding. Among the Supreme Audit Office’s findings was that the Ministry of the Environment spent over CZK 110,000 on around 70 frames for photographs.