Abdulah Nakas

Abdulah Nakaš (November 27, 1944 – November 27, 2007) was a famous Bosnian surgeon, chief surgeon at Sarajevo's State Hospital for over 30 years. At the outbreak of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in May 1992, this hospital was part of the Yugoslav National Army network of hospitals, serving army personnel but also dignitaries and local residents. As most of the staff had military training and the hospital was right in the centre of the city, it rapidly filled with casualties. Conditions were horrific and Abdulah would operate with his team under temporarily rigged lights, often without basic equipment, anaesthetic gases, or analgesia. Abdulah worked 1500 consecutive days during the war and its aftermath.

He knew from an early age that he wanted to be a surgeon and that he wanted to live in Sarajevo. He did both, qualifying in 1968 from Sarajevo University and doggedly working away at general surgery, acquiring en route an encyclopedic knowledge of urology and gynaecology.

After the Bosnian war he started the Union of Health workers in 1997. Abdulah also turned to politics and was elected a member of the parliaments of first the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (one of the two post-Dayton peace agreement entities) and then the state for the SDA of Alija Izetbegovic. He was not particularly nationalist and was moderate in his views, but was deeply disturbed by the break up of Bosnia and Hercegovina following the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

His last illness was short; he was operated on in Berlin, but died a month later from a ruptured abdominal aneurysm followed by haemorrhagic pancreatitis and renal failure. His funeral was one of the largest seen in the country and attended by over 10,000 ordinary people, many of whom he had treated. There was little pomp and ceremony and no elaborate speeches. He was buried in Kovaci, an old cemetery dedicated to soldiers and the many civilian victims of the recent war.