Dr. Fočo: KCUS is politicised, the favoured are privileged, the unfavoured are persecuted

Dr. Faris Fočo says that in the 27 years he has worked at the largest healthcare institution in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the situation at the Clinical Centre of the University of Sarajevo has never been worse.

One of the leading specialists in maxillofacial surgery in the country says: „There are doctors who are favoured and those who are not. Our salaries are low, we do not have enough medical consumables to work. The leading clinical centre in the region is deteriorating.“

The Clinical Centre in Sarajevo is the largest healthcare institution in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the wartime destruction of the capital of BiH, modern medical equipment arrived at KCUS, so it quickly became a respectable healthcare institution, not only compared to other similar centres in the country, but also to those in the region.

Sarajevo doctors gained international renown, primarily due to their wartime experience.

„Performing surgical procedures in an operating room whose walls shake from shelling, for four long, cold and dark years, was not experienced by any other generation of surgeons in the painful history of wars,“ states a report by Dr. Ismet Gavrankapetanović.

World media reported on children who were wounded again on the Children's Orthopaedics Ward, two or three days after being massacred on the street. The nurses who were wounded along with them were operated on only after the doctors had treated the butchered children.

In peacetime, the situation became difficult in a different way. Things went to the other extreme. At least 40 doctors, including some prominent specialists and professors, left KCUS after Dr. Sebija Izetbegović took over the institution. Izetbegović is the wife of the SDA president and BiH Presidency member Bakir Izetbegović, who came to this position with political support at the beginning of 2016. Even if she reduced the rate of corruption, as she claims, the austerity measures introduced by the new director of KCUS have endangered patients. Doctors warn that they lack basic resources for work. Interpersonal relations are disrupted. On top of all that, Izetbegović uses political support to settle scores with political dissenters. However, doctors are not warning about politics, but about poor professional relations and problems with the supply of necessary materials. Doctors' salaries at KCUS are shamefully low.

Recently, the head of the Clinic for Orthopaedics and Traumatology, leading European orthopaedist Dr. Ismet Gavrankapetanović, was dismissed without explanation. The KCUS management ignored the request of several hundred citizens who demanded the dismissal of Dr. Izetbegović and the Management Board due to this scandal, which also resonated in Europe.

„After 27 and a half years of work at KCUS and many years of education, my salary, without a meal allowance and on-call duty, is 1,488 KM,“ says Dr. Fočo.

To have a somewhat decent life, specialists from KCUS must seek an additional source of income. A year and three months ago, Dr. Fočo sent a request to the management for supplementary work of two and a half hours per day in a private polyclinic in Sarajevo. Although BiH supports and regulates supplementary work by law, he did not receive a positive response, nor did some of his colleagues. Supplementary work, he points out, differs from private practice.

„Precisely at KCUS, the situation is politicised, so if doctors are more politically favourable, they fare better,“ Dr. Fočo told the Patria agency. He performs up to 150 surgeries annually, while some of his colleagues, for the same or better salary, barely have 20 surgeries per year.

„Doctors from KCUS are forced into supplementary work due to the miserable salaries we have. We would like to have decent salaries and not have to think about supplementary work,“ says Dr. Fočo. He is one of the leading specialists in maxillofacial surgery and a subspecialist in plastic and reconstructive surgery of the head and neck. His colleagues in Europe earn several tens of thousands of euros per month. In Sarajevo, every low-ranking political official and lower-ranking employees of all public companies have a higher salary than a specialist doctor. Fočo is still kept in Sarajevo by patriotism and the hope that something will change.

Some of the doctors who requested the dismissal of Dr. Izetbegović and the Management Board are now under strong political pressure. The ruling SDA recently issued a public statement clearly supporting Izetbegović and her decisions, conveying that they do not want to hear the opinion of the majority of doctors or citizens.