We visited Hospital in Pirot on April 13th, 2021 and met with Dr. Goran Petrović, urologist and Director of the Hospital and Dr. Marija Milošević-Antić, rheumatologist. It was an opportunity to better understand the situation and the needs of health providers in this part of eastern Serbia.

The Hospital in Pirot covers the region of almost 90000 people spread across pretty large area and covering municipalities of Pirot, Bela Palanka and Dimitrovgrad among others. The hospital itself employs over 120 doctors, and it was built in early 80s. Since then very little was invested in maintenance – very typical for many hospitals in Serbia. Thankfully, Dr. Petrović and his team were able to secure funds to start the first phase of hospital renovation, and the work has already started. They hope that the hospital will be fully renovated over the next 3-5 years.

In the mean time, they still need to provide necessary health care to local population. They are currently woking in the Covid mode, and hope that over the next period they will be able to establish diagnostic center at the hospital. They have equipment for  digital mammography and hope that they will get MRI and scanner. They are established program for cervix cancer screening and are starting program for breast cancer screening and colonoscopy.

We discussed how SAMA can help, and focused on two areas to begin:

• Help replace mattresses in the hospital, some of them are in very bad shape as can be witnessed from the attached photos
• Education: Dr. Petrović was very vocal and supportive of organizing potential seminars at the hospital. They have experience in organizing such seminars, and nice amphitheater that can host it.

We plan to organize fundraising for this project in Q2 or Q3 of 2021 and donate the new mattresses with covers hopefully by the end of Q3 to the hospital.