Dragutinović N.: paediatric hepatogastroenterologist in Serbia

We are talking to Dr. Nataša Dragutinović, until recently of Belgrade’s University Children’s Hospital, about the difficulties — but, yes, also the joys — of training and working as a paediatric hepatogastroenterologist in Serbia, a nation shunned by the European Union since the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990s. Resources are scant; health-care systems are underdeveloped; opportunities to travel abroad, to learn from and to train with providers of highly specialised care, are few. Nonetheless, during slightly more than a decade in her position the division to which she belonged doubled in size, from three to six plus a junior trainee; began a liver-transplant programme; and brought to her nation’s children substantial advances in enteral and parenteral nutrition care as well as in interventional endoscopy.  Impossible, she tells us forthrightly, without guidance, without continued assistance, from mentors (for her particularly the teams in Bergamo, in Lyon), and she urges ESPGHAN to facilitate through on-line conferences, through travel bursaries, development of the person-to-person contacts that have meant so much to her and to her colleagues :  Serbia is still IN Europe, she reminds us, and one day, with the help of organisations like ESPGHAN, of women and men like the members of ESPGHAN, Serbia will be fully OF Europe again. Dr. Dragutinovic´s favourite song: Od kada tebe volim - Divana ESPGHAN favourite Songs can be found on: https://open.spotify.com/track/13o1LAzN52dgTuemTFX6cE?si=d797b60e721a4032