Due to inflation and rising prices, patients at Sarajevo’s General Hospital ”Primarius Dr. Abdulah Nakas” could be left without food. The problem was created by suppliers, who terminated their contracts due to the increase in purchase prices. The hospital sent an appeal for help to companies and citizens because every food requires public procurement – a procedure that can take months. Help could arrive at the General Hospital the next day. And in legal form, BHRT writes.
There is food for another fifteen days. This was an initial, arbitrary assessment of the General Hospital, and they came out with this information so that patients would not be left without meals. And they are prepared for about three hundred patients a day. According to the General Hospital, the suppliers unilaterally terminated the contracts signed for one year. And that is precisely for the basic foodstuffs that are necessary and that have become many times more expensive. Money is not a problem, told Dr. Ednan Drljevic, but procedures.
“We now have to call these huge tenders again. It lasts, and if there is a complaint, it lasts over a month. So, as a precaution, we used that call to get help just to get through that period,” told Ednan Drljevic, Head of the Infectious Diseases Department of the General Hospital “Prim. Dr. Abdulah Nakas“
“It will not happen again, for example, this unpleasant situation of asking for financial help from citizens, alms, because it will be solid support for financing. Many other status things will be defined, but most importantly, it will be protected from tycoons and any other coups that wanted to shut down the hospital, “stated Zvonko Maric, SBB representative in the Canton Sarajevo (CS) Assembly.
The CS Health Insurance Institute (ZZO CS) says it has no official information on supply problems. Their domain is finance, with which, they claim, the General Hospital has no problems.
“This problem is not within the competence of the Institute, nor can we intervene in that part in any way. The Law on Commodity Reserves of CS prescribes situations when the Government can intervene with commodity reserves and we assume that a transitional solution can be found until new procurement procedures are completed, “ it was said from the ZZO CS.
The SBB Caucus Club in the Cantonal Assembly also submitted a request for an emergency session, precisely because of problems with food procurement. They consider it inappropriate for the General Hospital to ask, as they say, for alms from the citizens. Apart from the management, they are pointing the finger at the cantonal government, because the hospital does not have a problem with finances and because the ZZO CS is doing its job in this case.
E.Dz.
