Stevcho Jakimovski, former mayor of the Municipality of Karposh and leader of GROM, has been urgently transferred from prison to hospital after his health deteriorated. The reason, according to the information available, is a worsening post-operative infection requiring medical intervention and hospital treatment.

There is no official statement on his current condition - neither from the prison administration nor from any health institution. Nor is there any word on how long the hospital treatment will last.

Jakimovski has been serving his sentence at Skopje Prison since mid-July. The Court of Appeal previously upheld his one-year sentence for illegal construction connected to the building that housed the Municipality of Karposh. Because he had already spent almost five months in pre-trial detention, that period was counted toward the sentence. He has said publicly that he has lung and bladder cancer and receives regular oncological therapy.

This is not the first trip to hospital

The director of Skopje Prison, Boban Utkovski, confirmed that Jakimovski had already been hospitalised for almost three weeks - from 5 to 26 August - at the private Acibadem Sistina Clinical Hospital, after reporting health problems. Once the treatment ended, he was returned to prison on 26 August.

In other words: two days after going back to prison, he is in hospital again. Utkovski does not disclose details of the diagnosis, citing the confidentiality of medical data, and says the institution acted responsibly and humanely. "Health and human dignity must be respected without exception," he stated.

The sentence is correct and should stay that way. But behind it sits a question that is not only about Jakimovski: is the prison system equipped at all to hold people with serious chronic illnesses? When a man with a cancer diagnosis has to be taken to a private hospital, is brought back, and two days later leaves again - that is not somebody's personal drama. It is an indicator that the prison health service is not covering what it is left to cover.

The sentence was upheld by a court and it has to be served. How the state looks after the health of the person serving it is an entirely separate question - and the answer does not depend on who the convict is.