Kosovo's ailing health system

The lack of drugs from the essential list as well as the obtaining material needed for patient treatment has forced patients to buy them for treatment themselves.

Ardita Hoti says that she was a patient herself until we met her inside the University Clinical Center as family after her brother's surgery.

We had to buy the most basic things during the operation that one of my family performed at the Kosovo University Clinical Clinic. Except for the doctors we have free, there's nothing else in the tennis service, everything's missing, and doctors have a problem with treatment because of the lack of needed equipment”, Hoti relates.

The University Clinical Clinic at the University Clinical Centre explains that except that there has been no overall improvement in the clinic during 2017, there has been only worsening of the situation in terms of child treatment.

There's nothing to distinguish for the better in 2017 from the previous years, except by a serious assessment I can say that conditions have deteriorated in the pediatric clinic. That's because we haven't received new donations, no equipment service, no drugs from the essential list. We cannot praise ourselves in this direction”, Bekith declares.

Emergency Center Director Basri Lenyan says that they have come to the aid of all patients who have sought emergency assistance but point out that he hopes that in 2018, he will not face the difficulties he has had this year with working conditions as well as a lack of medicine.

“We hope it won't happen again in 2017. I believe that the state of Kosovo will take very seriously the emergency services, being called to the Law for Emergency Services that guarantees the essential list of emergency medical services, equipment, extensive material, and 2018 to be a year of changing activity due to the requirements required for emergency services”, Lenyan says.

Despite work difficulties at the QKUK Emergency Center alone, more than 55 thousand cases have been handled during the year, of which only patients affected have been 5 thousand and 870, a 15 percent increase compared to last year.

While only as visitors during the day, the University Clinical Centre of Kosovo attends more than 30,000 people.

This appears according to an analysis of the Sanitary Inspectorate, where it is said that the high frequency of people during the day at this center prevents a desirable level of hygiene.

Doctor outage, disturbing phenomenon

Meanwhile, even the flight of medical frameworks is considered to be quite disturbing to the country. The Union Health Federation, according to research that it has done, has released data, under which for three years about 400 doctors have fled Kosovo.

But, even more disturbing is the fact that during the interview of thousands of students, 73 percent of medical students have claimed that if they had the chance to be employed outside Kosovo, they would do so.

“To the West requires many health workers, and about 400 doctors have left Kosovo without counting the nurses. This remains disturbing. And, from our interview, it turned out that it wasn't just about the low wages of doctors, but it was listed as the first doctors who were supposed to leave outside Kosovo, the politicisation of health, the poor planning of employment and continued education, and then it was wages, the ones that push them to flee”, suggests Blerim Syla, chairman of the Federation of Health Union.

By contrast, in 2017 the University Clinical Center of Kosovo has been accepted for employment by about 190 experts from various leaves until 70 medical experts have remained unemployed.

Kosovo, to meet European standards, connoisseurs say health issues, should employ two thousand doctors and five thousand nurses, as much as resident per head.

The health budget over the years has been around 180m euros, while in 2018, this budget is prepare. / REL