Army Doctors Visit Villages Near Sombor for Free Checkups
A team from the First Training Center Sombor checked blood pressure and blood sugar in Zarkovac and Lugovo, and visited those who could not travel. Rastina is next, in September.
When was the last time someone checked your blood pressure without you having to drive into town? Residents of the villages of Zarkovac and Lugovo, near Sombor, got exactly that yesterday, August 31, right outside their own front doors.
The campaign, called “Army Doctor in the Village,” is run by the First Training Center Sombor as part of its civil-military cooperation program. The idea is simple: people in remote villages rarely make it to a regular checkup, so the doctors come to them instead.
What Was Actually Measured
The focus was on two things: blood pressure and blood sugar. “The diseases of today, in growing numbers, are diabetes and hypertension, and if they are caught and recognized in time, appropriate therapy can prevent further complications,” says Lieutenant Igor Terzic, a doctor with the First Training Center Sombor.
Terzic adds that the army does not take that trust for granted: “People have great trust in the Army of the Republic of Serbia, and of course, we try to preserve that trust.”
The team did not simply wait for people to come to them. Residents who could not reach the checkup site because of their health condition were visited by the doctors at home.
What It’s Like When the Nearest Clinic Is Far Away
Grubosava, a resident of Zarkovac, put it best when describing what an action like this means when the nearest doctor is far away: “The doctors are far from us, there’s no transport, there’s nothing… This is our salvation. Like they say, this is salvation, salvation for all of us here. Well done. And thank you very much to the army.”
Also on site was Captain First Class Zlatko Milic, a veterinarian with the First Training Center Sombor. His part of the job was not about people but about pigs, specifically protection against African swine fever. “My goal today is to show the owners of small rural farms, in a direct and practical way, the importance and the method of implementing biosecurity measures to prevent the African swine fever pathogen,” Milic explains. He adds that owners, knowingly or not, often break those measures themselves and bring the virus into their own household.
The Campaign Started in February, Rastina Is Next
This year’s series of visits in the Sombor area began in February and repeats almost twice a month. Savo Iriskic, deputy mayor of Sombor for social welfare and veterans’ affairs, says that for rural areas without a permanent clinic, this is far more than a symbolic visit: “Their arrival, their care for the population, means a lot to us. Alongside the mobile clinics and pharmacies, an event like this, where they visit these places almost twice a month, gives us the assurance that we can rely on the Army of Serbia whenever we need to.”
The next visit is scheduled for the second half of September, in the village of Rastina.
If you live somewhere the nearest clinic is half an hour away, the easiest way to catch these visits is through your local community office, since the schedule is usually not announced far in advance.
