With blood gushing from the nose and a blood pressure of 240, a patient and her daughter got stuck in the elevator of the hospital on Saturday at the GOB "8 Septemvri". Instead of taking them to the seventh floor, the elevator suddenly collapsed into the basement. The patient collapsed from the stress, and for 45 minutes, a repairman did not come to intervene on the defect. With pliers, the hospital staff opened the door a little to let air in, and the patient and her daughter went through hell.

– My mother had a blood pressure of 240 and that's why we came to GOB "8 Septemvri". After the elevator failed and got stuck, I rang the bell for ten minutes and no one responded. Luckily I had network on my phone and was able to call my husband who was waiting outside so he went to security. Otherwise, they wouldn't even be startled by the ringing. They used pliers to open the door a little to let some air in, because my mother was in a very bad condition. My mother held tissues over my nose to stop the bleeding. It's lucky that she was bleeding, otherwise she could have had a stroke from that stress, her daughter Bojana Jovanovska told "Sloboden Pechat".

Although 45 minutes passed, the master was nowhere to be found, but from outside it was only heard that the only master present in the hospital was the plumber.

A hospitalized patient dressed in hospital pajamas, unable to see the horror, forced open the elevator doors with his hands and pulled the mother and daughter out, for which they had to climb over him.

– A sister stood on our side, said that the elevator regularly gets stuck and that this does not make sense. My mother could have died with such high blood pressure. Once outside, we entered in a smaller elevator, probably for the staff, and we went up to the 7th floor of the ENT. There, my mother screamed from the stress and they put new tampons on her, and the nurse was extremely inhumane and did not even want to explain to me what was going to be done to my mother. It was over, and again after all the horror we had been through, they sent us down the stairs on foot. It was a horror, I'm still in shock, adds Jovanovska.

In June of this year, the City General Hospital "8th of September" concluded an agreement with the company "Sezal" DOO Skopje, for the repair, maintenance and monthly servicing of elevator facilities and flat-rate maintenance of elevators. The contract refers to a total of 17 elevators in the hospital facility.

According to the contract, the procurement holder's obligation is to provide an elevator service technician who will be present in the premises of the hospital where the notification and alarm system is located in the event of elevator malfunctions, every working day, from Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 16 p.m. who will immediately intervene on elevator malfunctions. Given that the unfortunate event that Jovanovska tells about happened on Saturday at 19:40 p.m., according to the public procurement contract, there should have been a team on call at the hospital on standby.

"The holder of the purchase is obliged to start the repair of the defect in the shortest possible time, that is, immediately after a telephone call by the competent services of the contracting authority. There should be a mobile duty team that will intervene in elevator malfunctions 24/7, that is, at any moment of the day and on weekends and holidays. After the received call for intervention, the team should arrive no later than 30 minutes after the call", it is written in Article 10 of the Public Procurement Agreement, obtained by "Sloboden Pechat", which was concluded between GOB "8th Septemvri" and the company "Sezal" in June 2023. 

The director of the health facility, professor Dr. Hristijan Kostov, denies the version of events described by Bojana Jovanovska. According to him, the patient and her daughter were not pulled out of the elevator by a patient, but by security and the pull out happened immediately.

– The patient has 10 reports that she was treated with us, and the bleeding is because she refused to receive the therapy at home. The elevator is not stuck in the basement and there was no "flying" down, but it is stuck between the second and third floors where one of the sisters waiting for the elevator heard them inside that they were stuck and security was immediately called. Security opened the door with a hacksaw and they went out immediately and not for 45 minutes. The elevators are new and rarely break down, but it happens in New York too, technical things and technical problems happen. It is important that they were repaired by the service technician, Dr. Kostov told "Sloboden Pechat".

In the GOB "8 Septemvri" for a long time in the past there were problems with the elevators that were solved by purchasing new ones, and it is evident from the public procurement system that the elevators are technically inspected every year. In March 2023, the hospital procured 33 automatic doors for elevators for 8,1 million denars, 3 cabins for 2,7 million denars and information displays for 457 thousand denars.