Kosovo aging medical staff, departments are closing down from lack of doctors

Retiring doctors in Kosovo, in addition to the increased phenomenon of the new generation of doctors, has caused the lack of health staff to be felt. The average age of family doctors in Kosovo has reached 57 years, until medical specialists, at about 53 years of age. This data was presented to the Federation of Health Union.

Health - field professionals say that in the next ten years, there will be a professional medical crisis, as they say, a doctor needs at least 15 years to be independent. in professional work.

One of the regional hospitals already suffering from the lack of doctors is that of Gjakova. The director of this hospital, Hilmi Shala, told Radio Free Europe that as a result of the medics' retirement, there are already departments that have been closed because no replacements have been found. Also, many other clinics within this hospital, he said, lack doctors.

We need various profiles, for example, the ophthalmology department is currently closed because two doctors working there have retired. Also, the Otorinolaringology department currently works with one doctor after another is retired. We need biochemists, hypocrites, emergency doctors and so on. There is also a surgeon who will soon retire and feel his absence”, Shala said.

On the other hand, the chairman of the Union Health Federation, Blerim Syla, indicated that seeing the pension trend, but also given the average age of doctors, Kosovo, in the next five to ten years, will experience an unprecedented professional crisis.

The average age of family doctors according to the Association of Doctors has reached 57 years, until retirement age is 65. And if we see that we have minus 200 doctors, this leads to the conclusion that we will soon remain without family doctors”, he said.

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According to him, it is currently being worked in that direction to enable capable and healthy doctors to work even after retirement, especially where a given department is threatened to close.

We're working on the Oda of the Medics to get an administrative guide, to engage the retired doctors in places where there is a need but who are in good physical and psychic condition. So we're not in a greedy situation, because as a framework we're getting older”, Syla added.

On the other hand, Oda of Doctors, Pleatat Sejdiu, said that as an institution, they don't have any statistics about how many doctors retire within a year, but said about 100 retired doctors already continue to work. in the private health sector.

In addition to the age of staff, it also singles out the departure of doctors outside Kosovo, citing the possibility of a serious lack of doctors as a concern in the years to come.

The number of those retireing is huge, if compared to the number of employees, since the average age is somewhere around 53 years of working force, that's what they do. But the flight of doctors abroad is now alarming. So we have no choice but to be replaced by new doctors”, Sejdiu said.

Different, more than 600 doctors in Kosovo are unemployed, of which, according to Kosovo Medical Oda statistics, 60 are doctors. Public health institutions, on the other hand, have stated that they need five thousand new doctors to be employed.

Meanwhile, in the Oda of Kosovo Doctors, during 2019, 115 doctors reportedly sought employment documents outside Kosovo.

The largest number of them, based on the Oda of Doctors, have been young doctors who have not been able to hire in Kosovo in their profession, though the health system has a continuing lack of doctors.