Roma Discriminated Against in Access to Health Care in Serbia and Montenegro

22 July 2005

Several reports issued by the Belgrade based Minority Rights Center in January, 2005 addressed rights violations in access to health care. On January 8, 2005, Ms Jagodina Ferizović took her daughter Ms. Anica Ferizović who was three or four months pregnant, to the Merkator hospital in Novi Beograd because she was experiencing a fever, pain in her stomach and could not walk. The attending nurse refused to admit the daughter because she did not have the proper documentation and proceeded to verbally abuse both Jagodina and Anica Ferizović. Jagodina Ferizović was only able to obtain care after walking from room to room requesting the assistance of doctors.

In another incident, on January 19, 2005, Ms Olganica Jasarević, who was in her ninth month of pregnancy and experiencing heavy bleeding, was verbally abused by the attending nurse in the gynaecology department of a clinic in Nis. When Ms. Jasarević arrived at the clinic she was admitted, however, when hospital staff would not assist Ms. Jasarević, she was forced to show herself to a bed where she could lay down to "stop the bleeding as much as [she] could." Approximately half an hour earlier the same nurse who admitted her came into Ms. Jasarević room where she saw the bed covered with blood and stated: "you dirty Gypsy, look what you have done." The doctor who attended to Ms. Jasarević reportedly apologised on behalf of the nurse and stated it would not happen again.

(ERRC, MRC)

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