May 8, 2021 – Doctors at KBC Zagreb were forced to use an unconventional procedure to save two lives when faced with a pregnant COVID patient whose condition was becoming life-threatening.

Doctors in University Hospital Centre Zagreb (KBC Zagreb) managed to perform quite a feat. They did a successful C-Section procedure on a pregnant woman with a bad case of COVID. The patient had to use a respirator to help her breathe. The procedure in question is a brand new technique that is rare in practise.

The University Hospital Centre Zagreb dates back to 1942 and is the country's biggest hospital. It also acts as a teaching hospital for the University of Zagreb's medical programs. KBC Zagreb is one of the country’s most renowned medical institutions with a long tradition of highly skilled medical professionals. So, it doesn’t come as a surprise the team at this institution was the one to do such a complex and risky procedure so successfully.

Urgent Procedure

As reported by index.hr the patient was 32 weeks pregnant. She came to the hospital with a bad case of COVID. The disease compromised her lungs and the doctors decided to put her on a respirator. Seeing how the condition was life-threatening to both the patient and her baby, they eventually decided to do a Caesarean Section. The procedure involved using an unconventional method that was technically very demanding. Circulation was routed through a dialysis machine and special filter in order to reduce the inflammation process and stabilise the patient. At the same time, aided by a team of gynaecologists, the C-Section was successfully performed and the baby was saved.

Both the mother and the child recovered. The hospital released the child already, while the mother is expecting to go home next week. In the end, the exciting story got a happy conclusion. KBC Zagreb doctors once again proved they are deserving of their professional reputation.

Medical professionals in Croatia continue their exhausting fight against the COVID19 epidemic. They urge the population to follow the safety guidelines and help prevent the spread of the disease. It is important to note how KBC Zagreb is working at full capacity. But the recent trend of a slow, but steady drop in the number of new cases is making everyone a bit more optimistic

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As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 16th of October, 2020, we currently have almost 500 coronavirus patients in various hospitals with 3.5 thousand infected people. If we continue at this rate next week, we will reach 700 patients in hospitals and about six thousand infected because some of them will have gotten over the illness. The Croatian hospital system could find itself in trouble if this trend continues.

''These figures can't be tolerated by the Croatian hospital system without running into significant problems. A week later, we could easily reach a thousand hospitalised people and nine thousand infected people,'' said Dr. Ozren Polasek for Jutarnji list.

Polasek is otherwise a professor at the Department of Public Health and head of the Centre for Global Health at the Medical Faculty of the University of Split, he is also a valued member of the Scientific Council for Combating the Coronavirus Pandemic of the Government of the Republic of Croatia.

In short, carrying on this way means we could get to numbers by October the 30th, 2020, that the Croatian hospital system quite simply can’t stand. The situation for medical staff isn't ideal either.

The Sestre Milosrdnice Clinical Hospital Centre currently has 124 health workers out of operation. 30 of them are positive for coronavirus, and 95 of them are in self-isolation. 250 people were tested at the Sveti Duh Clinical Hospital, and 11 positive results have been received so far, and a dozen more positive ones are expected today. There are 48 employees of that facility now in self-isolation.

The hospital in Split can function without difficulties until the number of hospitalised persons with coronavirus exceeds 50, and now they have about 30 patients. In Medjimurje, where the number of patients is growing relentlessly, the situation is satisfactory so far, but that could all alter very quickly with the pace of the spread of infection.

A total of 34 medical workers who tested positive for the new coronavirus and 64 of them who are in self-isolation were the balance sheet in Osijek-Baranja, Vukovar-Srijem and Pozega-Slavonia counties as of the 15th of this month.

''The number of patients and those in self-isolation isn't yet too large and we therefore have no problems with the organisation of work. There will probably be more patients, but I hope that the numbers won't be so large that we can't organise everything,'' said doc. Dr. Zeljko Zubcic, the director of KBC Osijek.

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The situation with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is expected to worsen as autumn and winter approach and bring with them much colder weather. During the summer season, the entire Croatian health system worked at about fifty percent of its usual capacity, as it does every summer, because at that time there were few patients, nor were there doctors available for full-time work, so Croatian hospitals were not crowded.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 18th of August, 2020, the preparations being undertaken by Croatian hospitals for the autumn ''meeting'' with a potentially more difficult situation with the new coronavirus were discussed at a recent meeting between Health Minister Vili Beros with the directors of numerous hospital institutions.

The summer season when the vast majority head to the Croatian coast en masse is always a more quiet time for hospitals and other health facilities across the country. However, the situation will soon change significantly, so a reminder of caution is necessary, Jutarnji list writes.

At the centre of the discussion yesterday were visits to children in hospital and parental dissatisfaction by limiting the meeting to just fifteen minutes, which has been a topic of heated debate and heightened emotions ever since the move was put into practice in an attempt to slow the rate of the spread of infection. The conclusion is that the health and safety of children being treated in hospitals must come first. The organisation of parental visits will depend on the capabilities of each individual hospital or health institution.

The Minister informed his colleagues that according to the European Commission's programme, another 250 respirators will arrive in Croatian hospitals soon, which means that the country would then have a total of 1,050 of them for those who have a dire clinical picture and require oxygen. Experts claim that this is a sufficient number if the situation with coronavirus in Croatia worsens.

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After a massive donation of 1 million kuna to Zagreb's ''Dr. Fran Mihaljevic'' Clinic for Infectious Diseases, the PBZ (Privredna banka Zagreb) Group is donating an additional 3.5 million kuna to Croatian hospitals to help them with the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

As Novac writes on the 9th of April, 2020, this donation is part of the PBZ Group's efforts during these utterly extraordinary circumstances to assist health care providers in combating the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) and in treating those who have contracted the infection in Croatia, as well as for help in remedying the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that struck the city of Zagreb recently.

The donation totalling 3.5 million kuna includes seven Croatian hospitals, all located in Zagreb, that will be donated to 500,000 each kuna.

"Croatia is one, we should always keep that in mind, and help our country whenever we can, and especially now during these extraordinary circumstances. In response to our community's needs, in early February, we donated one million kuna to the Dr. Fran Mihaljevic Clinic for Infectious Diseases for the procurement of medical equipment. Now, two months later, faced with the coronavirus pandemic and the aftermath of a strong earthquake, we have decided to donate an additional 3.5 million kuna to hospitals for the medical equipment they need. This donation is part of our corporate social responsibility project 'I do good every day' through which we continuously support national, long-term projects for the well-being of children and young people, but we also respond to the current needs of our society," said Dinko Lucic, CEO of Privredna banka Zagreb.

"On this occasion, I'd like to thank the PBZ Group once again for recognising the need and taking the initiative which will provide for better quality work in our earthquake-damaged health care facilities and thereby facilitate day-to-day care for patients during the coronavirus epidemic," said Prof. dr. sc. Vili Beros, MD, Minister of Health.

As touched on, the PBZ Group made the generous donation of 3.5 million kuna as part of its humanitarian project 'I do good every day', which has been helping the community for over ten years now. The project was launched by the Group back in 2008 to continuously offer long-term support to the community in which it operates, allocating one kuna for each transaction made with a Visa card, at no additional cost to card users.

The PBZ Group has so far raised more than 19 million kuna for the project and, including these latest ones, has made a total of 48 donations to hospitals and social care homes across Croatia.

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As Novac writes on the 28th of March, 2020, in order to help those who currently need assistance during the coronavirus outbreak, the management and vice-presidents of the Podravka Group, as well as the rest of the company's management, will set aside a portion of their own personal income and donate it for humanitarian purposes.

To date, those individuals from the well known Croatian company Podravka have raised more than 900,000 kuna, which they will donate to Croatian hospitals for the procurement of essential respirators and other necessary medical equipment needed to try to manage the current coronavirus pandemic.

''In addition to our regular humanitarian assistance, the least we as individuals can do is, in addition to organising our business operations appropriately during these extraordinary times, personally help out financially, so that our contribution can be incorporated into the purchase of respirators that may help save someone's life, or protect the lives of those who are busy saving lives by purchasing protective equipment.

I'm proud to be at the forefront of a company whose workers are wholeheartedly accomplishing their tasks, and whose management has never hesitated for a second in individually allocating their personal funds to be part of this humanitarian story,'' said the initiator of the initiative, Marin Pucar, CEO of Podravka.

In addition, as they emphasised, the Podravka Group's employees are working at full capacity these days. Production has been properly organised into three to four shifts, they claim, and their warehouses are working until late at night to load goods into trucks.

''Quality control laboratories are monitoring our production work flawlessly, some employees from corporate and administrative departments have been sent home to reduce the potential risk of them contracting coronavirus, and work from home for them has been organised. There are sufficient quantities of food and medicines to stop shop shelves from becoming empty,'' they state from Podravka.

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As Novac/Frenki Lausic writes on the 4th of May, 2019, across 59 hospitals in Croatia, a total of 41,692 workers are employed, out of a total of 65,000 employees in the health care system, and the share of health workers in the total number of hospitals ranges from 70.1 percent in the Lovran Orthopedic Clinic, to 81.2 percent at the Clinical Hospital Centre in Zagreb.

From this data, it could easily be concluded that the hospital in Lovran operates poorly, as it has a large number of administrative staff who aren't directly involved in the care of patients, while KBC Zagreb is best placed financially because it has the least employees in administration. The reality is exactly the opposite: Lovran is the best Croatian medical institution financially, making it one of the ten major state hospitals operating without any losses, while KBC Zagreb has the biggest losses, the most obligations, and the most outstanding unpaid obligations.

However, data on the positive financial performance of hospitals may be correlated with the fact that the largest share of beds (in total capacity) is boasted by the clinic in Lovran, 82.61 percent, while OB Varaždin, one of the general hospitals with the worst business indicators, has the largest number of beds for long-term and chronic treatment, as well as palliative care (511 beds, or 49.18 percent of the total bed capacity of the hospital) due to the merging of the Novi Marof Hospital for Chronic Disease and the Hospital for Lung Diseases, and TBC Klenovnik OB Varaždin.

Therefore, the status and causes of success and failure in Croatia's hospitals need not be judged at first impression because each hospital is a special case for itself and requires a deeper analysis. However, there are also common denominators when it comes to the ''bad'' side of the Croatian hospital system, ranging from poor financial results, some bad patient outcomes, long waiting lists, and some institutions with literally horrible sanitation facilities.

In response to a survey conducted by Maja Vehovec, Ivana Rašić Bakarić and Sunčana Slijepčević, researchers from the Economics Institute back in 2012, which included one director of the Clinical Hospital Centre, three directors of general hospitals and two directors of special hospitals and representatives of the association of employers in the health system, it can be seen that when finances are in question, "the root cause of the problem with not paying costs is seen by directors as a continuous imbalance between the revenue received and the expense accounted for."

The basic part of the hospital's income is, in fact, the income that the hospital receives from HZZO, which are presented as the so-called "limits", ie, the annual budget funding which was introduced back in 1997.

For this reason, the authors point out that the limits to be allocated to hospitals should be based on objective indicators such as the number and types of surgeries, the number and type of outpatient examinations and the like, ie, the costs of each activity. The second management model in this part, based on the payment of the services provided, began being implemented back in 2015, at the time when Croatia was ruled by an SDP government, but such a practice was later stopped by the HDZ government, which returned the "limits" method the following year.

The Croatian Government and the Ministry of Health have decided to ''repair'' the situation this year by increasing their contributions to the healthcare system from 15 to 16.5 percent.

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Click here for the original article by Frenki Lausic for Novac/Jutarnji