Academician Milivoje Sarvan: The Founder of Modern Paediatrics in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The aim of the article is to present to the medical, and then to the general public, the person and work of Milivoje Sarvan (1896–1978)—one of the pioneers of social paediatrics in Serbia and one of the most prominent paediatricians, scientists and organizers of health services in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the second half of the 20th century. Milivoje Sarvan was born in 1896 in Požega, in the Kingdom of Serbia. He completed his medical studies in Lyon (France) in 1921. Upon his return to Serbia, he was a county physician in Aleksinac for three years and, shortly after the establishment of the University Children’s Hospital in Belgrade in 1924, he was among the first assistants employed there. Out of the total of 23 years of professional work in Serbia, for 19 years he was an assistant and assistant professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade. At the end of 1946, at the initia- tive of the Ministry of Public Health of the People’s Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dr. Milivoje Sarvan was appointed full professor and head of the Department of Paediatrics at the newly established Faculty of Medicine in Sarajevo. At the same time, he was elected head of the Paediatric Clinic in Sarajevo when it was established, and he would later manage it from 1947 until his retirement in 1967. Already at the beginning, Prof. Sarvan developed the activities of the Clinic in several directions: he cre- ated the conditions for clinical, teaching and scientific research work. He took care of the education of future paediatricians and child care workers, organized courses in social paediatrics for general practitioners and professional training for paediatricians in the country and abroad. The next period of his activities was marked by the intensive development of the Clinic in all areas of its work. He published more than 120 professional and scientific papers in national and foreign medical journals, and several health education books on mother and child care that have been published in several editions, with large print runs. He was the dean of the Faculty of Medicine and vice-rector of the University of Sarajevo, founder of the Paediatric Section of the Society of Physicians of Bosnia and Herzegovina, lifetime president of the Association of Paediatricians of Yugoslavia, a member of the Scientific Society of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1955 and the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina from its foundation in 1966. He was honoured with high level social awards and recognitions, including the highest state award of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia—the AVNOJ award. After his retirement (1967), he lived in Belgrade, where he died in 1978.

Conclusion. Bearing all of this in mind, there is no doubt that Dr. Milivoje Sarvan is one of the significant figures in the field of professional, scientific and organizational work in the field of children’s health care in the former Yugoslavia, leaving a significant and indelible mark in the current states of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.