Horrible Conditions at Orthopedic Clinic, Lack of Medicine and Service

Conditions at the orthopedic clinic at the University Clinical Centre in Kosovo, according to patients, but even health professionals themselves are not good at all. There is a lack of medicine and redeeming material until the quality of the services is left to be desired.

Mirnje Berisha, 30, is the daughter of a 70-year-old patient who is lying in this clinic for a month now. She has told Radio Free Europe that conditions and services at this clinic are not good at all.

“has been accompanying the parent to the University Clinical Center for more than 10 days. Conditions on the first floor in this hospital are miserable. I've also seen that patients with broken body parts with gips lie on wheels without wheels based on concrete cups. Let's not talk about other missing things, such as cabinets, chairs, as well as lack of electrical jars in toilets”, Berisha said.

Orthopedic at this clinic, Xhemajl Selmani, told Radio Free Europe that medical staff is capable of very specific operations, as they have been trained for them. But, according to him, such operations cannot be carried out because of lack of tools as well as needed relief materials.

“Conditions are relatively heavy for work, lacking many medical equipment we need, lack extenuative material that conditions our work and quality of work. We always improvise to do work with patients”, Selmani said.

He also said that patients should not rarely wait until four years for surgery to come to the orthopedic clinic, due to the lack of extenuating material they need in operational halls.

According to him, despite continued request to the Health Ministry for supply, this has not happened, and this situation, he stresses, affects the increase in patient names on the waiting list.

The expectations of patients for knee and arm operating are up to four years due to lack of material for these operations. Although many doctors at the orthopedic clinic are certified and we know to do these types of operations”, Selman says.

In the health ministry, meanwhile, they say the supply over the past year was not weak. Faik Hoti, director of the Department for Information at the Ministry, gives details about the supply, based on the files of the pharmacy division within the University Clinical Centre.

“As far as the supply is concerned for the University Clinical Centre of Kosovo, according to a pharmacy division data, it turns out that the total supply for the first three months of 2017 has been above 89 percent”, says Hoti.

According to him, the supply for the second three months has been 86 percent until the third month, 72 percent.

“For the last three months of 2017, the total supply of preservative material drugs has been around 60 percent, for a period when there has been no budget revision, and there have been restrictions on the ministry's” financial means, Hoti said.

However, he has stressed that with the Kosovo Government's decision, in 2017 an additional 3m euros were allocated to the Health Ministry for the pharmaceutical sector.

The health-sharing budget in 2018 will be 200m euros, as opposed to the preliminary years of 180m.