Macedonian citizens are by now accustomed to the public campaigns urging them to donate for the treatment of a patient suffering from a rare disease or whose treatment abroad costs too much for the family and is not being covered by the public Healthcare Fund. But the latest example is particularly jarring. A call is spreading across the social media to donate for a young boy from Skopje who is in need of being urgently transported to a hospital in Slovenia after suffering serious electric burns.

After the public institutions apparently failed to act with the necessary speed, the parents and their friends turned to Facebook to request donations or any other help in providing medical helicopter transport to Slovenia.

We urgently need a helicopter to Slovenia. The child has 4th degree burns at 80 percents of its body after touching a railway power line. Healthcare Minister Filipce took the weekend off and is unavailable to approve public funding. We urgently need to save the child, is the text of the message being shared online.

After the calls spread online, the Ministry was prompted to take action. It issued a press release saying that they are working on the case and are trying to care for the child here while searching for available transport for Slovenia.