So many doctors left Kosovo these three months

The Kosovo Medical Oda has indicated that within the first 3 months of this year, the departure from Kosovo has made 62 doctors of different fields.

Blakaj, in a confession to Kosova Prees, has indicated that within months it is expected to start schooling specialisation at the Graz Hospital in Austria as it has already secured the German visa.

This doctor, who currently works in a private hospital, although he had acquired the right to self - financing at QKUK, says he was forced to give up education.

I'm a general physician, specialization, orthopedic, and I work in the American Hospital and specialization, I'm frozen, but I think I'm going to continue in Austria. The main reason was the financial cause that if I had already received payment specialization but that from the beginning it was known that we didn't all get it, but the cause is financial, but if I had already had paid specialisation, maybe it made me think about staying. At first the working conditions have not been because I haven't been informed of the working conditions that are in Austria in the town of Graz, where I am thinking of continuing specialisation, but when I've been informed of working conditions there and I'm now seeing my colleagues who have only started specialising here they are just additional reasons that I have been convinced that I haven't started specialising in Kosovo”, he said.

The 33-year-old from Istog no longer aims to return and work as a doctor in Kosovo. Blakaj has decided that after completing specialisation in the field of orthopeda, his life and career as a doctor will continue in Austria.

The point is to go there to perform specialization, the future is unknown. Right now in this situation that I think I'm going to continue specializing there and hire myself with more dignified wages where you are valued more than you do in your country. Unfortunately, here we don't have the right treatment of the college completion difficulties, the length of studies all of them, and when you finish your faculty you're on a salary below the average of a salary that is in Kosovo”, Blakaj stressed.

Concerns about the departure of doctors to EU states have repeatedly voiced institutions and health organisations.

Kosovo Medical Oda Chairman Plerat Sejdiu has said that within the first 3 months of 2022 Kosovo has left 62 doctors of various specialties.

Sejdiu considers that the state is ignoring this problem by doing nothing in terms of halting the flight of the health brain.

“Most of them are academics, the state has offered them but what it has offered them. And the other concern is that this problem is being ignored, which is not ignored because if we've designed 250 people this year, they're going to age 30 years, and if we see that the Faculty of Medicine approximately 150 is producing doctors a year, we're automatically at minus, plus those who are retiring, plus those who are getting bigger in private are leaving state institutions”, he stressed.

The head of the OPC has indicated for Kosovo that primarily working conditions, higher schooling, and wages are the main factors that are driving doctors to make the decision to continue exercising it outside Kosovo.

He says that with this flight trend within 10 years, public clinics and hospitals will be shut down in the absence of health professionals.

The Duke of the evacuation of “medical servants” from Kosovo also views members of the Parliamentary Commission for Health and Social Goodness with concern. MP Bekim Haxhiu estimates an immediate response from responsible institutions is needed.

While listing some of the actions to be taken, deputy The PDK has said that although this government had pledged support for health professionals, the opposite has occurred.

This is a disturbing phenomenon that is happening and it takes immediate action to stop because decisions to prevent there were no and we are in a situation that if this phenomenon continues with this intensity within a few years we will remain without real health professionals. It takes action on the part of the government, namely improving the working conditions of health professionals, raising pay for them, and that would directly affect them. Then in support of these professionals for continued education, and these are the grounds under which circumstances would have to be created to protect health professionals in Kosovo. The government has done nothing but negatively impacted this process, where there has been possibilities through the USKKUK Board, demotivated the health professional by placing himself in non-professional leadership with the calculations of non-progressive, illegal nature, and there has been no support. Much has been promised for them, in fact, zero support, demoturation, despair”, MP Haxhiu has said.

Despite these concerns, Health Minister Rifat Latifi says that doctors' interest in returning to Kosovo has also increased recently.

I feel very bad about everyone leaving, but now we have a very intense interest in doctors, experts in Europe and the United States who want to return to Kosovo, family doctors and work doctors, other oncological surgery doctors. As minister of health and as Minister of Health and as Government of Kosovo, we are interested in increasing quality of services by building infrastructure, by building our management, our obligations”, Latifi stressed.

According to data from the Kosovo Statistics Agency (ASK), the total number of public sector health employees, in 2020, was 13 thousand and 518 employed, of which: 3 thousand and 555 were medical doctors and 8 thousand and 386 nurses, while 1 thousand and 577 non-medical staff. /kp