Students in blockade have been handing out “victory flyers” for days at stalls across Belgrade, informing citizens about their plans for education, agriculture, and how to heal the Serbian healthcare system. As pressing issues, they highlight abandoned clinics, the closure of state pharmacies, an insufficient number of general hospitals in Serbia, and the fact that money is being spent on building facades while healthcare workers leave the country.
Interlocutors of the Danas daily support the students’ solutions, emphasizing that depoliticisation in healthcare is urgently needed.
“Clinical centres are overburdened with patients who should be cared for closer to home, simply because the system beneath them does not exist. While big cities have a private pharmacy on every corner, people in smaller towns lack access to the medicines essential for their lives. Money is available, but it is not going where it should. Instead of investing in educated people, money is spent on freshly painted facades and rigged tenders. The result: doctors and nurses are leaving the country in their most productive years,” the students point out.
They add that solutions do exist and are achievable, but they require a smart reallocation of resources, the nurturing of staff, and a genuine will for a better future.
“Our vision is a human-centred healthcare system: accessible in every village and town, transparent with every dinar and decision, and dignified for every patient and every healthcare worker. Health is not, and must not be, a privilege. When the system becomes open, fair, and based on knowledge, we will finally have the healthcare we deserve,” reads the student program being distributed to citizens.
Therefore, their goals are to have healthcare workers in every village, to make medicines affordable for everyone, to ensure hospital accessibility across all regions, to invest in personnel and knowledge, and to establish a system that gives healthcare workers a reason to stay in Serbia.
Government officials have also recognized the obvious shortage of healthcare workers, attempting to resolve the issue through mobile clinics and appeals for doctors to return to the country and serve rural areas. However, many view this as merely a populist pre-election measure that will not restore the healthcare sector.
Recently, during a visit to Novi Pazar, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, stated that the state allocates no less than €5.2 billion annually for healthcare, yet problems persist despite these heavy investments.
“What worries me more is that I still see we are unable to fully provide the level of service I would like. I don’t know where all that money goes,” the President said, among other things, adding that doctors working simultaneously in both the state and private sectors poses a major issue, but one they must continue to “handle” due to a lack of alternative staff.
“Where and how health insurance funds are spent remains a state secret”
Rade Panić, an anaesthetist at the Studenica General Hospital in Kraljevo and member of the Doctors and Pharmacists Union of Serbia, says that the government of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and Aleksandar Vučić only remember healthcare before elections. He stresses that it is not the state investing money in healthcare, but the citizens of Serbia, who contribute through mandatory health insurance to secure healthcare guaranteed by the Constitution and current laws.
“It is nearly impossible to access valid data on whether the money collected through health insurance is spent entirely within the healthcare system. Where and how it is spent is practically a state secret. It would take me a long time to explain how irresponsible this government is regarding citizens’ health – citizens see and feel it best whenever they need a medical service. The fact that the president of all citizens says they ‘cannot find doctors’ is the outcome of the policies they have pursued over the last 14 years,” says Panić for Danas, noting that providing a sufficient workforce to ensure accessible and quality healthcare for all Serbian citizens is a legal obligation.
“The SNS’s plan is to largely privatise healthcare and view citizens’ health as an opportunity for profit rather than a basic human necessity and right. Healthy and satisfied citizens are the greatest wealth a nation can have. Aleksandar Vučić should not be trusted in any case, and when he is in the middle of an election campaign, you can be certain that almost everything he says is empty promises. Citizens should take photos of the mobile clinics as a keepsake of the false promises made by an unauthorized individual,” he adds.
“Investments in infrastructure are pointless if patients still have to wait for months for an appointment”
Ivana Bajkin, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Novi Sad, considers the students’ healthcare program a good plan, though she notes that accumulated systemic issues in healthcare require time, and that equal, high-quality, and timely healthcare for all patients must be the top priority.
“The current disparities in access to healthcare between residents of Novi Sad and Bačko Petrovo Selo, for instance, are a disgrace to the present healthcare system. A prerequisite for any reform in healthcare is ending the temporary acting status of executives in healthcare institutions and announcing transparent recruitment calls for management positions, as most directors remain in acting roles far longer than the statutory six months. Through incompetent management, this allows the ruling structure to hold these institutions in its grip, dictating staffing and all other decisions regarding the organisation of healthcare services,” Bajkin tells Danas.
Introducing clear criteria for leadership positions and systemic accountability, she notes, is the only way for expertise to become the foundation of management once again.
“However, patients – who have long been treated as a necessary evil rather than central figures – must be placed at the heart of the story and the healthcare system. Furthermore, what cannot be done overnight, but remains urgent, is reviving primary healthcare as the backbone of the system,” she emphasizes.
Bajkin concludes that without clear managerial accountability, transparent recruitment calls, and actual performance evaluations, any budget increase will only serve to maintain an inefficient apparatus instead of creating a system that truly heals.
“The billions invested have been squandered wastefully by incompetent managers lacking professional knowledge and personal integrity. All of them were appointed precisely because of their loyalty to the ruling party. Populist claims citing the amount of money invested without addressing incompetent management and transparent procurement are pitiful, to say the least. They target people who do not critically evaluate others’ statements, but blindly trust and follow,” she adds.
“Regarding the five points proposed by the students, improving the availability of primary care and medicines in smaller towns will certainly be the easiest to implement. Immediately after that, I would add the urgent regulation of the private sector – specifically, a strategy to integrate private healthcare institutions into the existing system so that patients who already pay for health insurance do not have to pay twice. Achieving this requires the depoliticisation of the Ministry of Health and bringing in experts, which is impossible under current conditions,” concludes our interviewee.
(Danas, 02.09.2026)
https://www.danas.rs/vesti/drustvo/lek-zdravstvo-studenti-resenje/