Efendić: The situation is unbearable, health centers in Sarajevo Canton should be handed over to local communities for management

(Patria) - Due to the problem of insufficient medical staff in the Public Institution Health Center of Sarajevo Canton, which has been ongoing for several years and is most pronounced in the Novi Grad Sarajevo medical unit, resulting in poor healthcare services for citizens, Semir Efendić, Mayor of Novi Grad Municipality, and Dr. Abel Baltić, Director of the Novi Grad Health Center, addressed the public.

According to Efendić's opinion, the solution to this situation is to send a request to the authorities in Sarajevo Canton, the Ministry of Health, the Assembly, and the Government of Sarajevo Canton, to change the law and hand over the management of health centers in Sarajevo Canton, as in all other cantons in Bosnia and Herzegovina, to local communities. 

"Nowhere except in health centers is managed by a cantonal institution. In Tuzla, it is the Tuzla Health Center, in Zenica, it is the Zenica Health Center. Municipalities, therefore, manage them, and they do so much more efficiently than cantons do. In addition, health centers are not financed through the cantonal budget, but are financed by the Health Insurance Fund, which citizens pay for, and we believe that it is urgently necessary to amend the law and the management of health centers. To simplify it in a way that it is not part of political bargaining in the Assembly, so that a minor party in the Sarajevo Canton Assembly gets the management of a Health Center and carries out that work without others being able to influence it," Efendić pointed out. 

He believes, as he said, that there are other reasons why people are not being hired and why the system for hiring health center employees is being complicated.

"As long as the triangle exists - the Health Insurance Fund, health centers, the Ministry of Health - things will not be clear, and as long as the Government is obliged to approve every doctor's employment. People are retiring, going on specialization, on sick leave, and patients are suffering from it all," said Efendić. 

He demanded that a certain number of people missing from health centers be hired urgently. 

The Director of the Novi Grad Health Center, Dr. Abel Baltić, emphasized that the Public Institution Health Center of Sarajevo Canton has been struggling with staff shortages for many years, at least five.

"This mostly refers to general practitioners, not to mention specialists. We realized that this is because not enough doctors are being hired as foreseen by the so-called Blue Book, which states that a family doctor team consisting of one doctor and one nurse can have a maximum of 2,000 patients in their team," stated Dr. Baltić.

The second issue, as he said, is that the situation with doctors going on specialization has not been resolved.

"A doctor who has obtained a deserved specialization is still listed on paper as an employee of the Health Center, but he cannot examine his patients, those patients are examined by other doctors, and no one new is hired in his place," said Dr. Baltić. 

As a third problem, he mentioned retirements.

"Now we have a situation where many of our colleagues are retiring. We have a relatively old staff, but we do not have approval for extensions of contracts for three or six months," stated Dr. Baltić.