site.btaPirogov Emergency Hospital Discharges Last Seriously Injured in Nightclub Incident in Kocani, North Macedonia

The last seriously injured patient in the incident at a nightclub in Kocani, Republic of North Macedonia, was discharged from the Pirogov Emergency Hospital, the hospital announced on Thursday.

The young man was transported in very serious condition 2 months ago along with 7 other seriously injured patients.

All patients underwent more than 30 major, complex, critical medical surgeries and several hundred minor surgeries. Hundreds of people from Bulgaria and hundreds from Macedonia donated blood. This gave the team of the Burns and Plastic Surgery Clinic, headed by Maya Argirova, a chance to perform that many surgeries, the hospital said.

Bulgaria was among the first to offer assistance to the victims of the Kocani incident. On March 16, 8 victims of the serious incident in Kocani were transported to the Pirogov Emergency Hospital. The team that transported the victims included Kiril Penchev, a resuscitator from the Pirogov hospital. A few days later, a young girl with minor injuries was admitted and was the first to be discharged.

After the incident in Kocani, 14 of the injured were transported to Bulgaria by ambulances and the Spartan military transport plane. Eight were admitted to Sofia’s Pirogov Emergency Hospital, three of the injured were admitted in Plovdiv (South Central Bulgaria) and another three in Varna (on the Black Sea). Currently, only one patient in Varna is still receiving hospital treatment.

A total of 59 people died and 155 suffered varying degrees of burns and injuries after a fire broke out at the Pulse nightclub in Kocani, North Macedonia, during a concert by the popular band DNK in the early hours of March 16, 2025. Most of the victims were between 14 and 25 years old. The fire was caused by sparks from pyrotechnics used for lighting effects at the concert. Hundreds of people rushed to the only exit as flames engulfed the roof of the building.