Patients don't like food at QKUK, they feed outside the clinic

In the central kitchen of the University Clinical Centre of Kosovo (QKUK), between 4 and 5 thousand meals are served during the day. Yet, patients say they do not prefer that food, so they most often feed outside the clinic where they are lying.

Food served by the central kitchen, they say, is not divided for certain clinics, since even certain diseases require patients to have specific and adequate food.

Patient Nuria Hasani, who has been lying at one of the QKUK clinics for two months, says she does not like the food they are served, believing he is neither healthy.

I've been in hospital for two months. I don't like hospital food, so I eat outside. The hospital offers as rations for lunch, beans, rice, gullash and I don't want that food, so we eat outside”, she says.

Gen Dobra, chief of the food sector at the University Clinical Centre in Kosovo, tells Free Europe Radio that for patients lying within the KKUK, three rations a day are offered. The food served there, according to Dobra, has good quality and is divided, depending on patients ' diseases.

The quality of food is good, although there is always room for improvement, not just for us, but also in much more developed countries. The science of the figure evolves. If some products have been healthy at one time, at another time this may change”, says Dobra.

While patient Hasani says that outside the hospital it feeds on fast foods like hamburgers and pies, Gen Dobra thinks such foods are not healthy, compared with food served in the hospital kitchen.

We have cases when patients refuse fish and buy fast food. So, the awareness of the population is low. You refuse meatball fish. Not all patients can enjoy food. Although according to the surveys we do with patients, they are satisfied”, Dobre points out.

On the other hand, Rina Tafarsik, endocrinologist, says that food served by patients is not divided for certain diseases. She says that after many years of medical demand, only bread offered to patients is specific but not food.

The majority of patients in the Endocrinological Clinic are diabetes sufferers. Their food should be special, since one of the methods of treatment is also food care. Food in our clinic is no different from any other”, Tafarskou says.

Ibrahim Trsnjak, the union inspector, says that in terms of food quality, like inspectors, they have no remarks, but he adds that the menu is not selected for patients, which, according to him, does not meet the adequate conditions for consumption for each patient.

And so far we haven't had any trouble with food. Meanwhile, classification of the menu for specific patients according to clinics has not been made at the moment, there are no selected or distinct menus depending on patients. So that's what all other places see, food should be specific for patients”, Trschnjak explains.

Besim Kodra, leader of the Association for Patients' Rights, tells Radio Free Europe, that the quality of food in Kosovo's University Clinical Centre clinic clinics is weak. It is based on complaints they have received as their own patients.

“The food situation is very weak, continues to be weak over time. As a result, many patients do not consume (food) in it. Many of them are fed outside or supplied by their families. Then there are no nutritionists who would determine which patient would consume food. So there are problems in general, both in preparation, distribution, and so on”, says Kodra.

Meanwhile, Mirjeta Zeqiri, a patient who had been lying down for ten days at CKUK, says that he is willing not to consume the food he is served, but at times he feeds on it.

I've been in hospital for 10 days. Sometimes I consume hospital food. But I don't always like food. When I don't want food, we order food at restaurants around the hospital. I think the quality is not weak, but because of the taste that is made for patients, without salt and without salinity, I don't like it, though it may be healthier”, Zeqiri says.

The chef of the kitchen, Dobra noble, although he claims that the menu has been divided for patients, depending on their disease, Radio Free Europe was unable to obtain a food menu, since Dobra says they do not own one.