About 200 doctors allegedly work without license

The Kosovo Medical Oda has doubts that about 200 local doctors working in public institutions may not be licensed, since they are not even members of Oda who is legally binding.

The chairman of this Ode, Plerata Sejdiu, at a media conference has indicated that 3681 members of Ode are 3681 doctors. While expressing concern for foreign doctors.

Until last week we had 3 grand and 861 doctors who were members, we thought every time we have about 2 thousand and 500 doctors, actually this is the exact number of doctors who offer health services in Kosovo. Of these are 23 foreigners who are members, 327 who work locally in the private sector, and 300 of them are unemployed both as general doctors and medical professionals. What concerns us here is the matter of breaking the law by non-Kosovo doctors, because our information is that about 150 doctors are working in private hospitals, he said.

As for doctors acting without license, he has said that about 90 per cent of foreign doctors are not members in Ode, which without membership cannot be licensed.

We can only suspect that most of them are not members of Oda, which is the first offense, the second offense is that there is no license. We can't know unless they're members of Oda and see if they have currency licenses. We suspect there could be 150 to 200 talking about locals working in public institutions. In foreigners 90 percent of them are not members of Oda and I don't know how to get licenses because immediately foreign licenses are issued to the Ministry of Health, which has no right to issue licenses if it is not Oda member by law”, he said.

At the weekend conference, Sejdiu has presented some of the works that Ode has done this year.

The first component the Oda of Kosovo Doctors has received this year has been ethico-professional surveillance, where it became known that during this year they have accepted 21 subjects, where it has made decisions for 10 subjects, another 7 subjects have been forwarded to the OPC prosecutor, 2 in procedure, and 2 subjects have been in prewritten terms.

The second component has been continued professional education, where Sejdiu said the main problem is that health institutions are violating the health law, not offering enough according to their obligations for training, building the professional capacities of its staff.

As for the competence of relicensation, the chairman of the Oda of Doctors, Pleat Sejdiu, has indicated that within the year, over 500 new licenses have been issued.

In this direction we have interrupted and declared no validations of all licenses that are over-term, starting on July 1st. All those who do not have normal currency licenses dare not even offer health services. We don't know how many there are, we don't have an exact clue because the health ministry structures in this direction don't have a database, we're building it now. We know from our members how many they are, but there are some of those who are not members there are about 200 people who don't know if they have licenses or not... In this period we have issued over 500 new licenses”, he said.

Sejdiu also spoke with faxes, suggesting that on February 1 of this year, the decision will come into effect for doctors to have only one fax.

Our “Our doctors will have only one fax that is authorized by the Medical Oda and produced only by the Medical Association”, Sejdiu said.

Meanwhile, it was announced that carrying the competence of expert education to the Oda of Doctors is under way.

He has also spoken of the financial report, which has revealed that by 2017 only 35 euros have been inherited and that they have managed to earn 303 thousand euros and have reached a positive balance of 121 thousand euros.