Prof. Dr. Qamil Haxhija was born in 1927 in Rahovec. He completed primary school in Rahovec, and Gymnasium in Prizren. He continued medical school in Belgrade, which he started in 1948. For political reasons, Dr. Haxhija was persecuted by the UDBA for three years in a row during his medical studies in Belgrade, a period which he has always mentioned as the most difficult period of his life. In 1958, Dr. Qamil Haxhija finishes his medical studies in Belgrade and returns to perform a one-year service at the hospital in Prizren. He completed his specialization in Ophthalmology in 1965 after staying in the departments of Ophthalmology in Skopje and the University of Zagreb.
From 1959 to 1962, Dr. Qamil Haxhija works as a general practitioner in SuharekĂ«, whose scholarship he received during his studies in Belgrade. From 1962 onwards, he was employed at the Hospital of Pristina, in the ward for eye diseases. In 1971, Dr. Haxhija is elected Head of the Eye Department of the General Hospital of Pristina. With the opening of the Faculty of Medicine in Pristina, he is elected the first Director of the Eye Clinic. For a while, he also held the position of Head of the Department of Ophthalmology in Pristina. During the years 1972 – 1976 Dr. Haxhija stays several times in European ophthalmological centers: in Rome, Copenhagen, Geneva, and shorter stays in Hamburg, Köln, and Paris.
In 1978 Dr. Haxhija successfully defends the habilitation with the title: “Toxoplasmosis of the eye in Kosovo”. He was soon elected as an Adjunct Professor and then as Professor for Ophthalmology, but he was soon forcibly removed from his job by the Serbian regime in 1990. Dr. Haxhija was the last president of the Kosova Chamber of Doctors before his dismissal.
Dr. Qamil Haxhija was the co-author of the main textbook on Ophthalmology, for Medical students at the level of Yugoslavia, edited by Milan Blagojevic and Olga Litricin. He has had numerous scientific and professional presentations and publications in the field of Ophthalmology. Primarly, he is known as the people’s doctor who restored the sight of more than 15,000 people operated by him in Kosova.
During his many years of work at the Eye Clinic in Pristina, he enriched the Eye Clinic with modern equipment through international projects, especially winning the prize of the Japanese JEC-Foundation Foundation, through which the department was given the most modern equipment for that time. He established various branches of Ophthalmology in Pristina and appointed his associates to lead those branches.
 Prof. Dr. Qamil Haxhija died in Pristina hospital in 1988, a few hours after suffering a heart attack.