As tenders fall, patients tremble for their lives

(Patria) - Nurse Senka Dervišević from Tuzla fought for the lives of children suffering from cancer in the Tuzla department for almost three decades, and today she is fighting for her own life. After being diagnosed with a rare type of leukemia, she underwent transplants, chemotherapy, expensive medications, and the disease has now spread to her brain, and she is receiving cytostatics in her spinal canal. Senka is in the hospital and states that radiation therapy awaits her, which, like others, she will have to travel for.

She shared her difficult experience and feelings with BHRT.

"I personally consider it a humiliation of the human race. As if we are children going there on an excursion by ourselves on a bus. Imagine such a patient who has to go through all that? Not everyone is in a situation where someone can help them financially or in any other way, pay for accommodation, food, taxi from the hospital to the accommodation and vice versa," Dervišević points out.

Vesna Marjanović, who is accompanying a friend to radiotherapy in Zenica, and is also the daughter of a mother suffering from cancer, testifies to the suffering and costs incurred by patients.

Vomiting and pain are only part of the arduous journey to a hospital in another city. She says that her friend was only reimbursed for transportation costs equivalent to a bus ticket.

"They gave her 560 marks, reimbursed her, and she spent over 2,000. She had to pay for accommodation because there are no beds in the hospital. Of course, she has to eat. She had to go privately to get tests done," says Marjanović.

Vesna describes an even more difficult situation when it comes to her mother.

"My mother did not go for radiation therapy, she is 82 years old, she cannot endure the journey. They did not provide emergency transport. She is a pensioner and the woman could not afford that much money for radiation therapy," Marjanović stated.

Patients travel for radiation therapy to Sarajevo, Zenica, and Mostar, but after the information that admissions in Sarajevo were suspended, we contacted this Institution. They responded to BHRT that work is underway on the de-installation of two machines and the installation of two new linear accelerators. Therefore, radiotherapy services for patients from the Tuzla Canton are currently suspended until the installation is completed. The Institute confirms that the transport costs equivalent to a bus ticket have been paid, and that there is no legal basis for reimbursement of costs for patient escorts. Also, private accommodation is not a type of health service.

"We have a certain number of requests from insured persons who have submitted a request for reimbursement of accommodation costs during radiotherapy. We have no legal basis to reimburse this service," says Riad Kurtalić, spokesperson for the Tuzla Canton Health Insurance Fund.

The question arises how many patients lack the financial means for life-saving treatment, can a patient in such a condition travel by bus alone? Social networks are flooded with difficult testimonies about longer waits for radiation therapy appointments and the loss of loved ones.

"More and more medications are missing, the machines are mostly outdated or nearing their expiration dates, and new ones are not being procured. Everyone knows this well. Believe me, the staff are also at the end of their strength, no one takes care of them either, everyone is silent, enduring, and collapsing from exhaustion," says Senka Dervišević.

The BHRT reporter also spoke with several patients from Gradačac and Gračanica. They testify to enormous costs, months-long waits for appointments, and struggles with administrative obstacles. One of them states that her brother waited for an appointment to go to Zenica for about five months, hoping every day that the phone would ring. He lost his battle for life, he never received the call.

Who will be held accountable for the suffering and loss of lives? While tenders for the procurement of equipment in Tuzla are falling through, apart from shifting responsibility, there is no other progress. How much do citizens' lives cost?