After the published news about the abolition of the Internist Intensive Therapy Unit (JIIT) at KCUS, the Klix.ba portal was contacted by Dr. Emir Festić from the American Mayo Clinic, who emphasized the importance of the existence of such a unit and stated the details of its creation, in which he was involved. Dr. Festić works at the prestigious private Mayo Clinic in the USA, where he left in 1995. Before that, he worked at KCUS, with which he continued to maintain professional contacts, together with his colleague Dr. Ognje Gajić, who also transferred from KCUS to the Mayo Clinic. There, they both became intensive care subspecialists and when they got the opportunity to get involved in the project of opening a recently closed unit, they both eagerly accepted it. According to Dr. Festić, the process of creating JIIT began in 2008 as a project of the Government of France. Then Dr. Guillaume Thiery, an intensive care specialist from Paris, came to Sarajevo to establish this unit. "You can imagine how many problems a foreigner who didn't even know the language encountered at the time," says Festić, and adds that Thiery started by painting the rooms that were given to him by the management of the KCUS at the time to procuring the equipment needed for this unit. BHAAAS (Bosnian-American Academy of Sciences and Arts) also joined the project, and doctors from this organization have been coming to KCUS for years to perform demanding medical procedures voluntarily, says Festić. He states that at the time this unit was formed, the treatment system for critically ill patients was twenty years out of date compared to leading trends, and that at the beginning he and Dr. Gajić employees were constantly available for consultations, but that by training the employed staff, the need for these consultations was reduced to a minimum. With the closure of this unit, the education of young personnel in this discipline has been completely stopped, Festić claims. Dr. Festić states that closing this unit could have catastrophic consequences for patients. "There are countless cases where lives were saved because patients were treated at JIIT. Before the opening of JIIT, all those patients would have died because there was simply no way to get treatment," says Festić. This doctor states that there is no rational justification for the closing of this unit if the goal is to provide a high level of health care for the critically ill. success of treatment at this unit published in the journal that deals with the publication of studies in the field of intensive care, this unit was very profitable; the money and sweat invested by a large number of experts and patriots was completely in vain, and the citizens and generations of future personnel will suffer because everything invested was intended for them on a 100% volunteer basis, except for the money invested by the Government of France for the salary of Dr. Thiery for several years and the equipment delivered," says Festić. He also states that a similar unit in Banja Luka, which they also helped, is progressing very quickly and is currently on par with similar units in Ljubljana, Zagreb, or Belgrade. Portal Klix.ba has already written about the indignation of the KS Medical Chamber due to the abolition of the Unit (Jedinica). (http://klix.ba)
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