Kosovo Emergency, Pristina: The place where the 4-year-old girl died
Imagine that you are a mother in your early thirties. Your daughter told you yesterday that she is not feeling well; you have noticed changes in her skin, and when you take her to the family medicine doctor, the doctor tells you to give her a syrup and to “tell your husband to take your toddler to get some fresh air.” The next day, you wander the hospital corridors with the girl in your arms, who writhes in pain, sometimes going up to the second floor and sometimes down to the first, because the health workers and nurses on the first floor tell you to go to the second and the ones on the second tell you to wait on the first. After four hours pass, you’re still waiting, unsure what to do, with a four-year-old child wriggling on your chest. Your daughter’s condition is getting worse; why no one is bringing her in, or why no doctor is carrying out the service you sent her there for. When the wait is finally over, your baby ends up in incubation. They take your daughter from incubation and send her to the emergency room in Pristina, which is more than an hour and twenty minutes from where you originally sent your child, but they don’t allow you to go with her in the same car. They don’t even tell you where they are sending your child. From all this confusion, anxiety, and disbelief about what is happening in front of your eyes, having no information other than what they give you, you find a car with your husband and arrive at the location where they sent your daughter. When you arrive at the capital emergency, you find your daughter dead. Your child has passed away! Yes, she is dead. Could you imagine such a situation happening to you? Well, if not, then there are two possibilities: you are not part of a minority community in Kosovo, like Melisa Shala, the 4-year-old Egyptian who died in unclear circumstances, or you have never dealt with the health system of a country like Kosovo.
Melisa’s mother, Arjana Hajra, captured in photo
Melisa’s parents to this day don’t know why their daughter Melissa passed away, even though she died on February 19th of this year. The girl had complained to her mother a few days before she died that she had been brutally beaten during a visit to a relative. The doctor who had given her the syrup had alluded to nothing serious, while the final report of the institution in which Melisa died stated that the little girl had died of an infection. All these statements can’t be more contradictory than this. The Kosovo Police has announced that an investigation about her death has been launched as a procedure of the case. The news was brought exclusively to the public by journalist Dea Dedinca from RTV Dukagjini one day after Melissa’s death.
Everyone from the health minister to the office of the people’s advocate had a public reaction regarding the case, beginning with NGOs and civil society.
The Human Rights Network issued a statement that, among other things, said: “We are deeply shocked and concerned by the recent tragic event in Gjakova, where a young 4-year-old girl lost her life in circumstances that suggest gross medical negligence and possible discrimination. This serious event has not only left a family in unbearable pain but has also raised serious concerns about the standards of medical practice and the protection of children’s rights in our society. The little girl, reportedly a member of an ethnically marginalized community, was subjected to a violent attack, sustaining injuries that required immediate and careful medical attention. Unfortunately, the allegations suggest that the medical response she received was grossly inadequate, raising questions about factors such as ethnic discrimination and how much this played a role in the level of care provided.”
The director of the Kosovo Institute for Justice, Ehat Miftaraj, on his Meta Page wrote that “a four-year-old child from the non-majority community lost her life under suspicious circumstances in a public hospital. We should not prejudge the actions or inactions of the medical staff. But the request to clarify the circumstances of the case and to make sure that there was or was not unnecessary medical treatment should be inalienable. From a human, moral, and ethical point of view, the Minister of Health should be interested, clarify, and declare publicly when a four-year-old child loses his life. Ministers and other leading positions would have to act the same. It comes that, the human, ethical, and moral aspects have been replaced by a political and monetary agenda, unfortunately.”
Melia’s father waiting for his relatives for the funeral
We are left with the question of why Melissa died and whether she would have died if she had not been left waiting for four hours without medical care. Above all, would she have been left waiting there for hours if she had been a child of the majority community? In conclusion, Melisa and other children and members who are not Albanians in Kosovo, other than Serbs, in Kosovo are left at the mercy of fate, knowing the rest of us very well that as long as the political parties implement no significant policy that could contribute to the non-majority communities in Kosovo, hence they know it won’t generate votes to them, the state and well-being of marginalized communities in Kosovo will continue to be on the edge of the precipice. Days have passed, and many more will pass, and Melissa’s fate will not be clarified, or maybe it doesn’t need to be clarified, because we already know why she is no longer among us. She is no longer with us because she paid the price of living among us.
Writes: Hanmie Lohaj
