Suffering of Sick and Elderly in the Besieged Sarajevo

Photo: Nurse Galiba Secibovic (Bosniak) cares for 72-year-old Vojin Nikolic (Serb), a deaf mute staying in the makeshift shelter in Sarajevo. Nikolic often tries to leave in search of his brothers in Serb-held territory.

“Death is at Home Here”
For elderly Bosnians, outlook is grim from a Sarajevo shelter

By Samir Krilic
The Free Lance-Star, p.A4
21 February 1995.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Crammed onto one floor of a former school, dozens of elderly Bosnians silently await the end of the war, or their lives, whichever comes first.

Sick and elderly Bosniaks, Abid Jahic (69) and Ajsa Smajlovic (81).

The makeshift old people’s home was set up in August 1993 in a shell-shattered school building several hundred yards from the front line. It shelters 64 sick and old people with no one to turn to.

One doctor, five nurses, four orderlies and a social worker try to cope with the needs both of their live-in charges and 150 other elderly people, many living on their own.

Conditions are miserable. Many of the elderly are too sick or feeble to make it to the toilet, so they relieve themselves on the floor or in bed. Natural gas for heat is scarce, so rooms are often icy. For most, frugal meals of beans, lentils and rice are the only break in a day of staring at the walls.