The residents of Veles have not been able to receive health care from a dermatologist at the General Hospital in Veles for five months. The only doctor is on sick leave for several months, and the patients are referred to a specialist in Skopje.

The spokesperson of the General Hospital, Dr. Elena Levkova Kulumova, told MIA that the dermatologist will return from sick leave in January next year.

In addition to the lack of dermatologists, the residents of Veles do not have specialists for other health services.

In a statement for MIA, Dr. Lilija Colakova Dervisova, general physician and family medicine doctor, as well as the president of the Association of Private Doctors of Macedonia, assesses that the situation with the lack of specialists in the Veles Hospital is very serious.

She warns that this situation with the lack of specialists exists in most of the hospitals in the country, such as Berovo, Resen, Debar and almost all smaller towns in the country.

This is a very serious situation for all citizens who regularly paid and pay health insurance and expect to have access to health services in their place of residence, explains Dr. Colakova Dervisova.

With the retirement of doctors and specialists and no influx of new staff at the General Hospital in Veles, as well as in other cities, she says specialist posts remain vacant.

Dr. Colakova-Dervisova says that the solution to this problem is to redirect specialist doctors from Skopje to other cities across the country.

The public health authorities in the country must urgently transfer a large number of specialist doctors from the clinics and hospitals in Skopje to regions in the country so that the citizens from the interior do not have to travel and expose themselves to expenses to Skopje. These doctors should be redistributed regionally and the hospitals in the country should be filled with such specialist staff, in the interest of the citizens, emphasized Dr. Colakova Dervisova.

She points out that the lack of specialist staff in the hospitals in the cities is a consequence of the fact that for many years now after specialization, doctors were not obliged to return to their hospital, but a large part of them remained in the healthcare facilities in Skopje.

The state must change its law, rules and regulations so that if a doctor received specialization, after specialization, he will have to return to his hospital in the city where he is from. With that, hospitals in the interior will have their own specialists. It is not possible for all doctors to move to Skopje, and leave the people in other cities without specialists, underlines Dr. Colakova Dervisova.