site.btaEquipment Donated to Hospitals in Two Bulgarian-Inhabited Villages in Albania

The Bulgarian Memory Foundation have donated supplies and equipment to two medical centres in Mala Prespa, Albania, an area which is inhabited mostly by Bulgarians, the Foundation said on Wednesday.

The donation consists of essential supplies, emergency aid sets, two air conditioners, and a professional biochemical blood test analyzer, which are badly needed in Mala Prespa.  The supplies and equipment will go to the medical centres in the villages of Pustec and Dolna Goricë.

In 2020, the Foundation donated an ambulance, a fire truck, and an SUV to Mala Prespa.

"Up until now, elderly and disabled people in Mala Prespa had to travel to a big city for a full blood test. The biochemical analyzer we are donating will meet locals’ needs by enabling them to have their blood tests done at the medical centres in Pustec and Dolna Goricë," the Bulgarian Memory Foundation team said.

The Foundation will also donate blood pressure monitors to the medical centres.

On the Foundation’s initiative and funding, several of the most prominent Bulgarian physicians conducted free preventive cardiological examinations of the local people in Pustec with state-of-the-art equipment in August. The medical team, which was led by the world-renowned Bulgarian cardiologist Prof. Ivo Petrov, examined 220 people in two days.

"Mala Prespa is one of the poorest parts of Albania. People in the nine villages in the area have no access to specialized health care, and its 5,000 inhabitants rely only on two general practitioners in the two medical centres in Pustec and Dolna Goricë. After our visit there, we found that the two polyclinics needed supplies and equipment and we immediately organized the donation so that the locals could get what they needed most as soon as possible," the Foundation said, calling the Bulgarian Government’s attention to the people of Mala Prespa.

The Foundation's founder and Preisdent, Dr Milen Vrabeski, has been investing personal resources in Bulgarian-populated parts of Albania. For over 16 years now, he has been organizing and financing educational workshops for young people from Bulgaria, Albania, Ukraine, Moldova, North Macedonia, and Serbia, and granting them access to vocational guidance and career development in Bulgaria, workshops, and other classes in robotics, cybernetics, programming, etc.

Vrabevski and his Foundation played key role in initiating and organizing the process of recognizing the Bulgarian minority in Albania in 2017, which the indigenous Bulgarian population there had been waiting for since 1934.

In 2020, Vrabevski's funding helped to repair the water main in the village of Tuminec, which in turn restored the 24-hour water supply in two of the nine villages in Mala Prespa.

The Bulgarian Memory Foundation continue their charitable activities in Albania by furnishing and equipping a school library, a staff room, and a modern computer lab at a school in Pustec, where children from all nine villages are studying.

At the request of Vrabevski and the Foundation, Bulgaria allocated funding for the remodelling of an asphalt-surfaced road between the Bulgarian-inhabited village of Vernik and the town of Bilisht in 2021.