205 doctors left Kosovo in 2022, with this trend a health care crisis is predicted in 2028

In 2022 alone, 205 young doctors left Kosovo, while around 60 specialists left the University Clinical Hospital Service to continue working in private hospitals in countries where they were offered much better salaries. Also, more than 630 nurses left Kosovo in search of better working conditions, Reporteri reports.

Low wages and poor working conditions are still the main causes of the increasing number of departures of health workers.

The president of the Medical Chamber of Kosovo, Pleurat Sejdiu, said that the trend of doctors leaving Kosovo increased by 35 percent, adding that anesthesiologists and pediatricians mostly left Kosovo.

"205 young doctors left Kosovo this year, and 159 last year, which means that this number has increased by 30-35 percent," Sejdiu says.

He believes that with this trend of doctors leaving, the public health system risks running out of doctors in the next five years.

"If this continues, we predict that within five years we will have a major crisis. If a thousand doctors leave in the next five years, and 700 will retire, then I think 2028 will be a year of crisis," he emphasizes.

The President of the Chamber of Nurses of Kosovo, Nasser Rustemi, says that low wages and poor working conditions still affect the fact that nurses are not ready to work in the public health system.

Rustemi asks Kosovo institutions to react in time to prevent the departure of nurses.

The departure of health workers from the public health system of Kosovo has been present for several years, and doctors and nurses mostly go to Germany.