Abdullah Nakaš
Abdullah Nakaš (November 27, 1944 – November 27, 2005) was a Bosnian surgeon.
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. Abdullah would operate with his team under temporarily rigged lights, often without basic equipment, anaesthetic gases, or analgesia. Abdullah worked 1500 consecutive days during the war and its aftermath.
After the Bosnian war he started the Union of Health workers in 1997. Abdullah 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 Izetbegović. He was not particularly nationalist, and was moderate in his views, but was deeply disturbed by the breakup of Bosnia and Herzegovina 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 Kovači, an old cemetery dedicated to soldiers and the many civilian victims of the recent war.