"Doctor!". This is how her colleagues and patients at the Gevgelija General Hospital addressed her, where she, dressed in a white coat, held the health and lives of the patients in her hands during the covid pandemic.

The hospital paid her a GP salary and a separate living allowance. But in all that seemingly ordinary everyday life, there was one huge problem: she had not graduated from Medical School, but was employed as a "doctor" for counterfeits. This is the story of A.A. (name and surname known to the editors) who has been employed at the Gevgelija hospital since 2016 in the position of doctor of medicine, without having a license from the Chamber of Physicians or having graduated from the Faculty of Medicine.

Sloboden Pechat investigated and provided all the documentation for this disturbing case, which lays bare the anomalies of a failing and plummeting system. As a final result of that systemic breakdown, more than 120 thousand euros were embezzled and the trust of the patients was betrayed.

Employee at the hospital in Gevgelija without a license from the Medical Chamber

In the folder with the documents for the employee A.A. in the hospital in Gevgelija, the high-quality forgery of the graduation certificate of the Faculty of Medicine in Skopje, submitted in 2016, cannot be found. That folder is empty today. Not even the forged and fabricated marks of this certificate. She doesn't even have the certificate for allegedly passing a professional exam before the committee of the Medical Chamber, with which this girl would really become a doctor in 2016, as she wanted others to think.

But those unreliable documents exist in other places, in the archives of other institutions, and we got them from there, from whistleblowers. In 2016, the whole set of false documents claiming to be a doctor of medicine brought AA numerous "benefits" - employment at the hospital in Gevgelija as a doctor (although at that time she was only a medical student), a doctor's salary, and the Board of Directors even and decided to give her the opportunity that many real medical graduates can only dream of – state specialization after anesthesiology and intensive care. One of the most responsible, the most risky, the most difficult and the most deficit branches in the state health, with which patients are put to sleep before surgery or "helping fate" so that they wake up from it.

Consequently, for the doctor without a Medical Faculty, the hospital allocated high sums for more than 5 years in a row, paying for her state specialization. The basic requirement to obtain state specialization is to be a doctor of medicine with a license from the Medical Chamber and to be in a regular employment relationship in a public health institution. A.A., although she did not have a doctorate in medicine, except that she got a job in the hospital in Gevgelija, at the end of 2016, by the decision of the Management Board, she was referred to state specialization. We asked the hospital, but they did not tell us the names of the members of the then Management Board who made this decision.

At the same time, a student in Skopje and a state specialist in Shtip

A.A. she enrolled in the specialization at "Goce Delchev" University in Shtip, far from the Faculty of Medicine in Skopje, where she was also a student of general medicine enrolled in 2007.

Of the several documents that the Gevgelija hospital sent to the University of Stip, the only original and reliable one was that of the Management Board. It says:

At the session held on November 11, 2016, the management board made a decision to refer A.A., doctor of medicine, to specialization in the branch of anesthesiology and intensive treatment. This decision enters into force on the day of its adoption, and will be published on the notice board of PHI General Hospital Gevgelija.

For more than 7 years, this woman presented herself as a graduate doctor, to the extent that she herself believed her own story, just as those around her believed her - the hospital with the Management Board, the commission for specializations, the Ministry of Health, the University of Stip, The Dean's Office of the Faculty of Medicine in Skopje. Simply, none of these institutions turned to the Medical Chamber to check whether the candidate for employment, who later became the selected candidate for state specialization, has a valid medical school diploma. In the archives of the Shtip University, the Hospital in Gevgelija sent only photocopies of the "documents" for the qualifications of A.A. Such, obviously, can be made on a home computer.

A lie repeated many times does not become the truth

One illustration that A.A. successfully navigated the institutional waters of state healthcare, was recognized among her colleagues as a doctor, and was given tasks that a medical student could not do, is her Facebook status from May 23, 2023, which reads:

Three years ago, all doctors, nurses and auxiliary medical staff from the anesthesiology and surgery department of Gevgelija General Hospital were part of the primary resuscitation and transport of the patient who was the first heart donor in Macedonia. Although no one has ever dared to give us credit, we know that we laid the foundation for the first heart transplant and helped a great heart from heaven continue to beat in another body on earth. Eternal glory to you, Emilia Dineva!

However, a lie repeated many times does not become the truth. The dangerous game ended with a domino effect with many consequences, recently, that is, at the end of the summer. Then the entire professional medical community, all the employees of the Gevgelija Hospital, but also the whole city, start whispering that something scandalous is wrong with the specialization of the doctor. AA again, she starts not going to work, and no one knows for sure why, and even fewer know that she has been fired in the office of the recently appointed director, Dr. Patrick Math.

The turning point and the end of all malpractices related to the doctor happened only ten days ago. Namely, on April 18, 2024, A.A. receives her first and only valid license from the Medical Chamber, after 16 years of study, she passed the professional exam at the Faculty of Medicine in Skopje. By that date, she had already been working at the hospital in Gevgelija for many years and at the same time specializing at the hospital's expense, even though she hadn't even graduated yet!

But considering that before she graduated, she had already specialized in Shtip for years, the moment came to receive the certificate of specialization and only three months later she became a specialist in anesthesia at July 4, 2024. Everyone who saw these two dates, that is, receiving the license from the chamber as a doctor of medicine on April 18 and receiving the certificate of completed specialization just three months later on July 4, got their heads down. They realized that it was impossible. Except in the case of cheating the system on the back of money and health of patients.

- I fired her, she is not here - the director of the Gevgelija General Hospital with extended activity, doctor Patrick Math, told us when we came to the hospital to ask how this case was allowed.

His predecessor, the ex-director doctor Mitko Krdzov, was startled by our phone call.

– How is that? These facts are new to me. When I became director in 2017, she had already been on specialization approved by my predecessors for several months. It was a situation I found myself in. For her, I know for sure that I annually paid thousands of euros for the specialization from the hospital's account to the University of Shtip. But I did not know that she received a specialization without even having graduated from the Faculty of Medicine - Krdzov told "Sloboden Pechat".

He added that he remembers the doctor because she worked with patients during the pandemic, in the modular hospital, when all the trainees were pulled back to the parent health facilities to help.

She also worked in the covid-center and in operations with patients, and yesterday she signed an agreement to return 120 thousand euros back

The director of the hospital, Dr. Math, told the "Free Press" that the hospital, in addition to firing AA, also signed a contract with her, in which she agrees to return 120 thousand euros within 6 months on the basis of wages and compensation for separated life, as well as for badiala paid specialization.

From the "Goce Delchev" Shtip University, they are decisive - the candidate who will be selected by the public health institution in a competition is the one who will specialize. The hospital itself when it chose A.A. for her trainee, for whom the state specialization in anesthesiology will pay, she did so with an advertisement to which she applied. It is the hospital that should check its employees and interns, not "Goce Delchev" University. The hospital is the one that provided the Shtip University Hospital with a score list for selection, a certificate for completing the Faculty of Medicine from 2015 and a certificate for her "passed" professional exam from 2016.

- Doctor A.A, employed as a general doctor of medicine at PHI General Hospital Gevgelija, is referred to specialization in anesthesiology with intensive medicine, and she starts with it from 01.01.2017. For this PHI General Hospital Gevgelija has concluded an agreement for the regulation of mutual rights and obligations between the public health institutions that refer trainees to the University "Goce Delchev" Shtip. The compensation paid by public health institutions for specialization in anesthesiology with intensive medicine, in total for five years, amounts to 11.600 euros in Denar equivalent value, the "Goce Delchev" University told "Sloboden Pechat". 

From there, they confirm that when the Medical Chamber informed them about the certificate for passing the professional exam, with which A.A. applied for specialization, in fact it does not exist, a decision was made to cancel the issued specialist certificate and the complete specialist internship. Her specialization was canceled on August 19 of this year.

- The decision to cancel has been submitted by us to the Medical Chamber of RSM, PHI General Hospital Gevgelija and to A.A. - they say from UGD Shtip.

"Sloboden Pechat" provided all the documentation for this case, which ends up in the hands of the Prosecutor's Office. None of the institutions that had the data on this case, reported the suspicion of a criminal offense to the competent Public Prosecutor's Office ex officio, although they had such an obligation according to the principle that anyone who learns about a committed criminal offense has the obligation to report it.

The director of the hospital, Dr. Math, says that they waited for the disciplinary procedure to be completed first, and then report to the OJO. "Sloboden Press" addressed in writing to A.A. Instead of answering our questions, she asked on the phone not to publish anything and to spare her, and at one point she said that "we will be repaid" for that.

Sources from the Health Fund say that she did not have a facsimile, that is, a seal, and was not recorded in the contract between the FZO and PHI General Hospital with expanded activity Gevgelija.

Specialization in anesthesia is one of the most difficult in medicine. This is not the first time that the hospital in Gevgelija has been rocked by a scandal in this field, and since the one that happened in 2015 – the recovery has been bitter, stressful and sad. In 2015, two now-deceased anesthesiologists were fired for having alcohol in their blood while performing an intervention on a woman in labor. Both the mother and baby died. To this day, the Gevgelija hospital imports anesthesiologists from Skopje, with an agreement. The plan of A.A. to become an anesthesiologist outside of the procedures succeeded, but for a short time, and the impression that the hospital invested in her case in vain remains. Long-time doctors unofficially comment that it is controversial for a doctor who was de facto only a general practitioner to introduce patients under anesthesia in medical interventions, even under the supervision of a specialist anesthesiologist. The hospital in Gevgelija is waiting for a new difficult awakening.