The letter of the President of KCS to the surgeons in the Diaspora
Addressed to: All surgeons of any surgical discipline, scientists of basic sciences who deal with surgical issues, residents of all branches of surgery, or even students of the Faculty of Medicine/Dentistry, and others who work and live in the diaspora.
“On behalf of the College of Surgeons of Kosova, I invite you for cooperation, membership, and engagement in the development and advancement of surgery in Kosova, the queen of all fields of medicine in the world.” We established the Kosova College of Surgeons (KCS) at the end of 2018 as a scientific and advocacy organization, to lead the advancement of all surgical disciplines in Kosovo with the standards and ethics of surgical practice.
Advancement of all surgical disciplines can be achieved through continuous and structured education, starting in the Faculty of Medicine, throughout the specialization that needs substantial changes, and sub-specializations in addition to technological advancements, as well as updating and adapting the newest protocols. clinical and scientific.
All the work of the KCS is organized through various Committees, by surgeons who have particular clinical interests and skills. Whereas, all our work is planned in order to increase surgical access for all patients, reduce complications by improving results, and at the same time reduce the cost of care for everyone.
Now KCS has gained importance in world surgery. Last year, for the first time, KCS participated equally with other states in the Congress of the American College of Surgeons.
It was my greatest honor to represent KCS in this great international family of surgery. We will be at this Clinical Congress every year, which is the largest in the world.
Although we are the youngest College in the world, this year we will celebrate the 5th anniversary of our establishment. Thus, the Kosova College of Surgeons has organized two very successful Clinical Congresses, in 2021 and 2022, and now for this year, we are in the process of preparations for the organization of the Third Clinical Congress, which will be held on October 12-15, 2023.
This Congress, like the others, will be multi-disciplinary with the massive participation of surgeons from Kosova and the diaspora, as well as the most eminent international lecturers, the most eminent surgeons of the world, who are now honorary members of the KCS, and others who have come with self-financing to our two congresses.
Meanwhile, it is worth noting that KCS has started republishing the only scientific journal in the healthcare field, the Kosova Journal of Surgery. In order to keep the KCS membership as well informed as possible, we have started publishing the KCS Bulletin, which from this year will be published three or more times a year.
I know very well how YOU all feel because you work and live where you are, but in your mind, you are always in Kosova. Yes, you live two lives, but it is so important to attend every KCS event, Congress, and all College Committees, bringing along your friends and mentors. You can support a lecture in the name of our esteemed professors, whom we have identified so that we never forget the teachers and pioneers of Kosovar surgery, you can support a part of the Congress, and you can share our commitment to building modern Kosovar surgery.
Become a regular member of KCS, and proudly add the letter FKCS after your name, Fellow of Kosova College of Surgeons, as I do in every signature of mine. Come to the Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons and see the flag of Kosova in the family of all those countries that do world surgery. I know you love Kosova very much, so now we need to express this scientifically and practically. Kosova greatly needs your contribution, for the discipline and work ethic that you have created outside of Kosova, for surgical and medical ethics, and for your scientific preparation.
Come and be part of the scientific symposia, lectures, and transformation of Kosova Surgery, and be part of the construction of 8 Clinical Surgical Centers of Excellence in Kosova, out of the 12 we have already promised to do.
Help out in one or more of the 22 sub-specialties we have planned during the past year. Come and lay a foundation stone for the Bio-Medical Center and Institute and Center for Scientific Research and Simulation, as well as other Centers of Excellence. “If WE surgeons do our job and put surgery on the highest pedestal, the doctors and other healthcare professionals of Kosova scattered all over the world will join us, too”.
Like all of you in the world, that is, outside of Kosova, I too have lived two lives for more than 30 years, the professional one in the USA, while always in my mind I was and am in Kosova. In November of 2021, I stopped all the things I had built over the years in the USA, as Chief and Director of Surgery in the entire network of 10 hospitals in Westchester, New York, and with great will and desire I accepted the invitation to serve the country and citizens of Kosova. This part of my life will be one of the brightest and most important of my academic, national, and human life. Less than a year later, with a lot of pain and unimaginable disappointment, I resigned, because I clearly understood that I could contribute much more “outside the POLITICAL CAGE and THEATER”.
I know that for many of you, my resignation from the post of Minister of Health of the Republic of Kosova had a bad impact, and it was a “cold shower”, in the hopes of the majority, who thought that we would finally transform it and we compete with the healthcare of Kosova. Even though I resigned from the post of Minister of Health, I made a promise and I will keep it until the end, that I will never stop helping Kosova.
I have not resigned to stop helping Kosova, in any way, together we will continue, so I appeal to YOU, to everyone, to do the same, “LET’S HELP KOSOVA TOGETHER”, in different but effective ways. We, at least, have the comfort to go slowly in the development of healthcare. This means that we have no time to waste with those who neither know nor want to develop the healthcare of Kosova. We cannot continue to cooperate with the “medical neocolonialists”, who have taken root in various forms in Kosova, for more than two decades now. To build our country we must have modern healthcare, without modern healthcare we do not have complete freedom and we do not have a functional state.
In order to achieve professional surgical equality, with world surgery, WE all together must work much more and “love our country and nation much more than we are loving today”. Each of us must be aware and behave more responsibly, but also, we will demand responsibility from everyone. My resignation was a demand for responsibility to each of us. It was not a surrender – on the contrary, it was and is the right to achieve our goals.