Everyday they wage a war for human lives. At the Clinical Center of Tetovo, the medical personnel is achieving the impossible for the patients that are hospitalized in the COVID-19 ward, helping them overcome this unfathomable sickness and return to their families.
Wishing to witness the situation of the patients that were hospitalized in this ward, we were escorted by the pulmonologist Ruzhdi Rexhepi
The rooms аre filled with patients. The personnel is trying hard to achieve everything. One group enters one room and another entering another. Almost all of the patients were in critical condition.
What complicates the whole process of treating patients is the fact that most of the patients have asked for professional medical help too late, when the diseases was already in an advanced stage.
As the pulmonologist Rexhepi explains, the patients have reported almost two weeks after they have felt the first symptoms. According to him, this was due to the disinformation that spread among the general public, such as if you go to a doctor, you will end up dead. This, in its turns, created a bad image of the medical professionals who treat the sick and for the COVID-centers in general. Although the disinformation is widespread, the doctors are trying hard everyday to prove the opposite.
“I was at home for two weeks. At the beginning I had problems breathing, but unlike the first day when I called in here, my condition is much better now. If I called in on time, I think I might have overcome this diseases with less difficulties. I was wrong ,” explains a woman treated for COVID-19.
“I didn’t come earlier because I thought it would pass. I tried to self-medicate myself, ” said the patient.
Another patient said that before he called a doctor, he stayed at home for 10 days since he did the first blood testing. Only when his condition worsened did he call a doctor.
In almost every room we entered, the story is the same. Only part of the COVID-19 patients have called the doctor on time, while most of them had waited 10 days at their homes and were self-medicating.
For all the patients that have succumbed to the influence of false information about the disease, the personnel at the clinic is doing everything in its power to bebring them back to their families.
