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 Isaretovic is among thousands of nurses and physicians from across
the Balkans seeking work in Western Europe, causing alarm among
health officials that the countries may be left without trained
medical staff in the near future.
"The state is pushing young people to leave, we get nothing -- no
jobs, no future, and most importantly, no security," said Isaretovic,
who could not find a job in her field in Bosnia.
Last year, 10,000 Bosnians applied for work permits in Germany,
according to the Agency for Labour and Employment, which mediates
between job applicants and German employers under a 2013 agreement
between the two governments.
Since then, about 2,700 nurses have left the country of 3.5 million,
1,100 of them last year alone. Around 400 doctors are estimated to
have left in 2016 and the same number expected to emigrate this
year.
"The departures from Bosnia have been gradual so far but once they
reach a momentum, it will be en masse, and may cause the health
system to collapse," said Meho Kovacevic, a 43-year-old orthopedic
surgeon working in the central town of Zenica.
The situation is similar in other Western Balkan countries.
The certificates that are required for physicians to work abroad
have been issued for 1,600 doctors in Serbia over past two years,
and nearly 1,300 in Croatia since it joined the European Union in
2013.
LOSING BEST EXPERTS
With their economies still recovering from a decade of political and
economic turmoil in the 1990s, and unemployment in double-digits,
the former Yugoslav republics have few funds to spend on healthcare.
Working conditions are poor and expensive modern medical equipment
scarce.
That is why a call by Germany in January last year for foreign
workers to come was met with a massive response. Europe's biggest
economy has vacancies for 10,000 nurses and 2,000 doctors, with some
40,000 registered doctors due to retire by 2021.
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According to the German Medical Association, 2,365 doctors from the
seven countries that make up former Yugoslavia were registered in
Germany last year, including 864 from Serbia.
"We are losing our best experts," said Zoran Savic, the president of
Serbia's medical workers' trade union. "Younger doctors will fill in
their places but it takes a minimum 10 years to educate a specialist
physician."
Medics complain of unpaid overtime and low wages. Nurses are paid
250-400 euros a month in Bosnia and Serbia, compared with a starting
salary in Germany of about 1,500 euros.
Surgeon Kovacevic, who is married with two children, said he was not
planning to leave Bosnia but was taking German classes all the same.
"Why tilt against windmills?" he said.
(Additional reporting by Gordana Katana in Banja Luka, Aleksandar
Vasovic and Ivana Sekularac in Belgrade, Fatos Bytyci in Pristina,
Igor Ilic in Zagreb and Thorsten Severin in Berlin; Editing by Ivana
Sekularac and Catherine Evans)
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