BOSNA IS SICK AGAIN

THE FLU IS RAGING THROUGH SARAJEVO

AIM SARAJEVO, February 17, 1995

All this town needed was a flu epidemic! And although the city bakery has been barely working for days now since over 50 percent of its workers are not coming to work, and the city is swept with stories on hundreds of sick citizens being treated in city hospitals, while all Sarajevo homes are panic-stricken by fear of a "strange kind of a China imported A type flu which knocks everyone off his legs" - only yesterday have the competent experts of the Municipal Group for Hygiene and Epideomiology officially declared that there is a flu epidemic. As one of the reasons for so stubbornly denying the existence of the so obvious epidemic, the mentioned doctors from the Expert Group cite their inability to apply the technology for virus isolation under war conditions, because they actually do not have that technology any more. However, as the figure of sick in Sarajevo was reaching alarming proportions and the data of the World Health Organization showed that the situation was similar in other countries of Europe, the epidemic was finally officially recognized here too.

In contrast to other European countries which fight epidemic with already proven and efficient medical preparations, Sarajevo shall have to overcome its flu without medication. Namely, although epidemiologists warned of the flu as early as December requesting that the vaccine be secured in time, today hundreds of Sarajevans stricken by the flu are looking for the necessary medicine in vain. The state pharmacies are empty, there are some drugs in the humanitarian organizations' pharmacies, such as "Merhamet" or "La Benevolentia" (arbid, vitamin C, andol), and the crowds unseen before in these outpatient clinics do not guarantee that these medicines will be obtained with certainty.

The local media daily remind Sarajevans to treat themselves with "home medicines", even recommending the use of soap-suds for reducing high temperatures, with the soap that is distributed here in humanitarian aid packages. Naturally, as a preventive measure, a higher calorie diet is also mentioned, as well as greater vitamin intake, which is literally unimaginable for the average Sarajevan. The average salary of those employed ranges between DM one and two, while the price of lemon or oranges is DM 4, of garlic DM 7, honey DM 13, while the prices of medicines in the local duty-free shop range from DM 16 for "penbritin" up to DM 22 for "ospen"!

The epidemiological service has recommended, i.e. ordered the necessary measures such as prohibition of visits to those hospitalized, isolation of sick patients and avoidance of public gatherings, while in cases in which high temperatures last for over five days, hospitalization is recommended because of possible complications, primarily pneumonia. However, the publicly proclaimed flu epidemic has again placed the chronic shortage of medicines in Sarajevo in the center of public attention. Donors are less and less interested in this city as the silenced grenades, and no blood on the pavements do not grab the attention of world TV stations which so often influence the interests of the international public. However, officials of world humanitarian organizations still come to Sarajevo, asking about the local needs, but medicines are, nevertheless, not coming. This is how Pasan Sehovic, Head of the Division for Medical Supplies from Humanitarian Aid, within the Ministry of Health of the Republic/Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, explains the lack of logic in the fact that in a sealed city such as Sarajevo, in which market relations have not been functioning for the third year now, medicines are accessible only to those who have enough foreign currency:

"Whole-sale pharmacies buy medicines for foreign currency directly from the manufacturers or through intermediaries. The supply in duty-free shops should not then surprising. Medicines are expensive all over the world, and consequently here also. However, what pains me most is when I compare the manufacturers' prices of medicines with those in pharmacies. I believe that they are as much as 300 percent higher than the price paid to the manufacturers. I think that stricter control by inspection services is needed, and even of the Ministry of the Interior in order to see how these prices were formed. This is commercial sale and all those who procure medicines in this way have to bear the risk, i.e. costs themselves, and not charge it all through the price."

And, so the majority of sick Sarajevans are trying to get over this painful influenza without German marks, i.e. medicines, while the lucky ones (about 15,000) have saved themselves by timely vaccination, and the others live in fear of the epidemic and do not open their doors. Fresh news is horrifying the exhausted denizens of Sarajevo: namely, the fourth death caused by hemorrhagic fever, better known as "mouse" fever carried by rats, was registered in the city. Since garbage collection has been very difficult to organize in Sarajevo for the third year now, heaps of garbage are being piled up in city streets and at corners, the fear of Sarajevans from a new plague is, unfortunately, not unfounded. Even more so since, according to Fahrudin Kulenovic, Director of the Institute for Public Health, it is necessary to find as much as DM 200,000, i.e. 44 tons of deratization agents for the spring rodent control action! Naturally, Sarajevo does not have any such amount. And little use of waiting for donors...

MIRSADA BOSNO