We will apparently survive the coronavirus, but not a healthcare system like this!

Written by Amina Čorbo-Zećo

„I watch, listen and read how certain institutions, establishments and individuals are bickering about whether they have equipment to work, whether they are protected, as “prescribed”, who asked and who didn't, who procured and who didn't, who would have procured if someone had asked, but didn't ask.

And so on and so forth, and then I remember that at the State Hospital “Sarajevo” we designed, and with the help of the private company “Etasvalves” from Sarajevo produced over 4,000 external fixators, named “Sarafiks”, with our own resources, from available materials, without attestations and certificates, which saved over 8,000 extremities from inevitable amputation throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, which in those years was awarded gold and silver medals for innovation and for which foreign orthopedists and traumatologists had only words of praise.

I remember the production of nearly 100,000 bottles of various types of infusion solutions (saline solution, Ringer's solution, glucose...) in the then pharmacy of the State Hospital “Sarajevo” which were “worth their weight in gold” at the beginning of the aggression and which certainly saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives of the wounded and sick.
The production of a disinfectant called “Diasept” which was used to combat hospital infections and disinfect the operative field, and all this with over 9,000 wounded, 15,000 major surgeries, over 2,000 births and much more.

What would have happened if we had acted casually and waited for others to serve us everything?“, wrote Dr. Bakir Nakaš.

In these lines lies all the truth of today's time and situation, and it also describes a state that is not like today, but harder for those who need healthcare. Imagine in peace!
A comment on Dr. Nakaš's post, given also by a healthcare worker, froze the blood in my veins.

„Congratulations, doctor, my father was saved thanks to those fixators, and now when he had a stroke, the emergency room took him to the General Hospital because it's Friday, and then they send him to the Clinical Center to lie down, and the man lives across from the Clinical Center, as if patients shouldn't go to the nearest hospital and have everything finished there. This healthcare has become ridiculous and everyone is invoking procedures and nonsense, and patients are the least important“, states the comment.

Therefore, Mr. Goran Čerkez, your disagreement with my claim that the patient pathway in Sarajevo Canton is complicated and inefficient, and the algorithm in the time of coronavirus is very imprecise and inefficient, does not stand.

I asked you why hospitals and clinics, of course apart from coronavirus patients, and there aren't many of them, there are 22 at Podhrastovi fortunately, are half-empty, I asked you why out of 300 beds in the General Hospital only about 60 are occupied. And you talked to me about war!

„I would say that the capacity has not been reduced, capacities have been increased, of course the focus is on the fight against the coronavirus, which does not mean that other acute patients do not have healthcare. So, the fact is that in hospitals today there is a significantly smaller number of patients than before this situation. We can compare this to the war situation when we had more patients in surgical departments compared to other types of services, i.e., those cold services“, Dr. Čerkez told me.

About the war situation, Dr. Nakaš said it best. In a war situation, there is no “I can't, I won't”, and fortunately today's situation is far from war.
My question was directed at the numerous complaints that people are being denied regular medical care.

„Nevertheless, see this issue with the institutions. We do not have such information. We know that we had patients who were positive for coronavirus and were operated on. We do not have such information“, added Čerkez.

Well, of course you don't, because you communicate with the management of institutions, and I with patients, with the weaker in the chain, with those who beg for health. Ask Maja from Zenica, whose child was sent back from KCUS with a tumor that was not operated on, ask the family and friends as well as the injured in the last accident in Čengić Vila what agony they went through in that “ideal” patient pathway. Ask, form commissions, send inspections.

I gave you, the media gave you information, allow patients to complain to you, prosecute those who send unoperated people home, to go through agony in front of their loved ones. As time passes, I am increasingly certain that we will survive the coronavirus but not this healthcare system created by Sebija Izetbegović.