A new protest rally by hospital staff was held outside the KB Dubrava Hospital in Zagreb on Tuesday following a decision by the hospital's administration to convert the entire hospital to treat COVID patients only.

Following a protest rally on Friday, several dozen doctors, nurses and carers protested once again on Tuesday outside the hospital, because patients in Zagreb’s eastern suburbs would be left without an emergency service that caters to a population of about 350,000.

They called on Health Minister Vili Beros to once again reconsider his decision to turn KB Dubrava hospital into a facility to treat Covid patients only.

Assistant director at the hospital Josip Curic read a proclamation on behalf of the protesting staff.

The proclamation underlines that patients are being treated in inadequate premises without proper electricity installations and with donated ventilators that are old and that patients in the eastern suburbs will be left without emergency and acute care services.

The hospital building is the only health institution in Zagreb and Zagreb County that is sound enough to withstand even the strongest earthquake and that is why the hospital should be treated as a location where all groups of citizens can be given medical attention at any given moment, Curic said.

Newly-appointed president of the hospital’s Administrative Committee Silvio Basic, who is also a state-secretary in the Health Ministry, during the protest on Friday confirmed that all patients who are not infected with Covid would be transferred from Dubrava Hospital to other hospitals in Zagreb and that an additional 200 beds had been secured for Covid patients.

Basic added that there was the sufficient number of medical professionals and sufficient ventilators at the hospital.

During today’s protest Dr. Antonija Djuzel expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that oncology patients will not be treated at Dubrava Hospital. “The public has to know – beds do not heal people. People heal people,” she said.