The number of health professionals seeking employment in European countries has not decreased, according to representatives of doctors in Kosovo, Albania and North Macedonia. Unsuitable working conditions and low wages are considered to be the main reasons why white-collar workers are leaving the region.
Bedri Ramadani, originally from Kosovo, has been living and working in Germany for 25 years.
He is deputy director of the Cardiac Surgery Clinic in Düsseldorf and says that the working conditions there are very good.
Ramadani does not rule out the possibility of serving in Kosovo in the future, but says that the politics of this country should support health institutions, so that more suitable working conditions are created for doctors.
The exact number of health professionals who leave Kosovo is not known. But an indicator is the number of those who request the certificate of ethics and profession - a document that serves to be employed abroad.
By the end of this year, it is expected that the number of health professionals who require this certificate will exceed one hundred, says the president of the Chamber of Doctors, Pleurat Sejdiu.
"...This number [of departures] could be even bigger, smaller assei. There is no decrease that we can declare", says Sejdiu.
Even from the National Council of the Order of Doctors of Albania (KKUMSH), through a written answer to KosovaPress, they say that during the last year, the number of doctors who requested the ethics and profession certificate is about 150.
According to KKUMSH, most of them are general practitioners.
The head of the Association of Doctors in North Macedonia, Nevzat Elezi, mentions approximately the same figure as in Kosovo.
