A nurse with ten years of service in the health system could not get a doctor when she needed one. That is the sentence that explains the entire story of Ljubica Šavreska from Ohrid - a woman who knows how the system works from the inside, and who was still left without help in her 24th week of pregnancy.

She gave her account publicly, addressing the Ministry of Health and the minister directly. She says that with severe pain and bleeding she sought an examination at several institutions - from Ohrid, through Struga, to Skopje. The pregnancy ended in the loss of the foetus.

The journey she describes

According to her statement, at the gynaecological emergency unit in Ohrid she got a two-minute ultrasound and an explanation that the pain came from the position of the foetus. She says the doctor then told staff not to wake him for such things at 3:30 in the morning, unless labour began. In Struga she was told it might be renal colic. Only the next day, back in Ohrid, was a shortened cervix of 13 millimetres established - along with a recommendation to go to Skopje.

In Skopje, she says, her condition worsened with heavy bleeding and severe pain, and her questions about contractions and about a cerclage got vague answers. In the end, through personal connections, she reached a private hospital where, as she puts it, she was admitted immediately and received treatment, tests and psychological support.

The sentence of hers that stays with you: she is not asking for a privilege, but for a system in which nobody has to beg for a privilege in order to be saved.

The two versions

The University Clinic for Gynaecology and Obstetrics has formed an internal quality control commission to review the case. At the same time, it rejects part of her account. The clinic says the patient received appropriate treatment, that she was never in a life-threatening condition, and that she left at her own request, against medical advice.

According to the clinic's version, she was admitted on 10 September at 03:22, at 24+2 weeks, with threatened premature labour and a shortened cervix. Transabdominal and transvaginal ultrasound examinations, laboratory analyses and a urine culture were performed, after which symptomatic and tocolytic therapy was administered according to protocol. On admission, scant dark red bleeding was recorded - where the patient describes heavy bleeding.

So the two sides diverge at exactly the point where everything is decided: how serious the condition was, and whether anyone explained to her what was happening. One side has documentation. The other has only the memory of the hours she spent waiting.

Who will establish it

The Ministry of Health has filed a request with the State Sanitary and Health Inspectorate for an extraordinary review of how the institutions and staff acted. After the inspection, the ministry says it will form a commission for professional oversight of the health workers involved in the treatment. If failures are established, the ministry says, it will act in line with the regulations.

That is the correct procedure - and it begins after Šavreska spoke publicly. The question is not whether the inspectorate will do its job. The question is how many patients without ten years in the health system and without a public voice went through the same night, with nobody forming a commission for them.