UNMIK/PR/32

PRESS RELEASE

22 August, 1999

SRSG marks Mitrovica hospital as neutral zone

PRISTINA-On a day-long trip to Mitrovica, Bernard Kouchner, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, raised the UN flag at the town hospital, marking the recent inauguration of international management of clinical health services in cooperation with both Serbian and Albanian medical staff.

Eight international medical personnel led by the hospital’s civil administrator, Francois Cremieux,  have established the hospital as a neutral zone, open to all communities served by the 700-bed hospital.

Dr. David MacFadyen, Regional Health Coordinator for the UN’s World Health Organization, said the hospital has been able to retain both Serb and Albanian staff and to ensure equal access to health care for patients from all over the district.

Dr Kouchner, co-founder of Medicines sans Frontiers, appealed to the staff, "This hospital is very important for the future of Kosovo. Stay together doctors, stay together nurses, despite your background, your identities. Stay together to work for the benefit of the patients."

Dr. Kouchner also discussed the re-opening of the university branch in Mitrovica with leaders of the local Serb and Albanian communities, KFOR Commander Gen. Cuche and acting Civil Administrator for Mitrovica, Mary Pat Silveira.

Earlier today, Kouchner also visited 250 Roma people camping in a former Serbian school since being expelled from their homes.

Some 300,000 people live in the region of Kosovska Mitrovica, where UNHCR estimates over 30 pockets of minority populations are in need of protection. The northern part of Mitrovica town is populated predominantly by Serbs. In the southern part, only a few Serb families remain, along with some 8,000 ethnic Albanians displaced from their homes on the other side.  Out of a pre-war population of 20,000, only some 500 Roma people remain in Kosovska Mitrovica.

On Friday, under a UN-led initiative, six Albanian families moved back to their homes in northern Mitrovica and remain under KFOR and UN protection.