Story · Državna bolnica · 1992 – 1995
Surgeon Abdulah Nakaš: 1,500 Days and Nights at the Operating Table of Besieged Sarajevo
When Sarajevo came under siege in May 1992, Abdulah Nakaš, chief surgeon of the Državna bolnica (State Hospital), stayed with the wounded and, according to available sources, did not leave work for 1,500 days and nights. In a hospital that was itself shelled, operations were performed by improvised light, without anesthetic gases, water, electricity or heating. After his death in 2005, the hospital was named after him.
Surgeon of the Državna bolnica
Abdulah Nakaš was born on 27 November 1944 in Sarajevo, according to the portal genocid.ba. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sarajevo and specialized in general surgery. For more than thirty years he was chief surgeon of the Državna bolnica in Sarajevo, in the municipality of Centar. Until May 1992 that hospital belonged to the network of JNA military hospitals.
The hospital under siege
At the beginning of the war, in May 1992, when Sarajevo was encircled, the Državna bolnica quickly filled with wounded people hit by shells and sniper bullets. During the siege the hospital itself was shelled several times.
Working conditions were extremely difficult. Operations were carried out under provisionally connected lights, often without basic equipment, without anesthetic gases and without painkillers. In the first winter of the war, 1992, there was a shortage of food, medical supplies and heating. The physician Suhrija Đozić described the hospital's greatest problems as the lack of water, electricity and warmth: the operating rooms were lit by an improvised battery, and at night work was done by candlelight. According to the same account, the hospital's physicians performed a total of 13,000 emergency procedures during the siege.
Abdulah Nakaš remained at the operating table. According to available sources, he worked 1,500 days and nights in a row.
Sadik Bazdarević
One of his patients was Sadik Bazdarević, who was wounded at Mojmilo. According to Bazdarević's testimony, Nakaš decided that he would be operated on first the following day. The leg nevertheless could not be saved and had to be amputated. Bazdarević remembers that the surgeon told him he had fought for his life, not for his leg.
After the war
In 1997 Abdulah Nakaš was one of the founders of the trade union of health workers. As a candidate of the SDA he was elected to the House of Representatives of the Parliament of the Federation of BiH, and then to the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH. He was a recipient of the Šestoaprilska nagrada grada Sarajeva (Sixth of April Award of the City of Sarajevo).
He died on 27 November 2005, on his birthday, after nearly a month in a coma, as a result of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm accompanied by hemorrhagic pancreatitis and kidney failure. He was buried at the šehidsko mezarje Kovači; according to the portal genocid.ba, more than 10,000 people attended the dženaza.
In 2006 the Državna bolnica was renamed the Opća bolnica „Prim. dr. Abdulah Nakaš“.