Over 4,330 people have died in Bosnia since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Among them are many doctors and medical workers.

N1 contacted the Public Health Institute of Bosnia's Federation entity to get more complete data on the number of deaths of medical workers and doctors, but they told us that they do not keep such data.

The website of the Chamber of Doctors of Medicine of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity, there is a section “in memory of”, which lists several names and surnames of deceased doctors from this Bosnian entity.

Retired infectious disease specialist and former director of the General Hospital “Prim. dr. Abdulah Nakas” in Sarajevo Bakir Nakas told us that the number of deceased medical workers and doctors from the coronavirus has its specific weight at the time of this pandemic.

“All healthcare workers are aware of the danger they are exposed to on a daily basis even without the pandemic. Fortunately, we know the preventive measures so we can protect ourselves. Of course, the relationship between the management, which is responsible for their health and the health of the patients, is also important,” commented Dr Nakas for N1.

“Unfortunately, the pandemic has taken away many health care workers in the world and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many of them had some other diseases that weakened their defences, but there are also deaths of those who have been healthy and relatively young. I hope that the pandemic will subside in the future, primarily thanks to vaccination and the measures we adhere to, so the number of sick and dead health workers will be smaller and will definitely disappear,” Nakas told N1.

We also asked Prim. dr. Dragan Stevanović, internal medicine specialist and subspecialist diabetologist and long-time head of the Department of Internal Medicine of the General Hospital “Prim. dr. Abdullah Nakas” who told us that such a loss for the health care is happening not only in BiH but also in the world and in the neighbourhood.

“There are huge losses and that was to be expected. Health workers are the most exposed population, regardless of all protection measures. Unfortunately, these are also relatively young people. Regardless of the way of work and protection measures – it was simply inevitable,” Stevanovic told N1.

He added that this is the fate of the medical profession.

Unfortunately, N1 was unable to gather data on the names and the exact number of medical workers who lost the fight with the pandemic, because we were unable to obtain this information from several addresses we contacted.