NADEŽDA STANOJEVIĆ - FIRST SERBIAN WOMAN PEDIATRICIAN

BIJELJINA, SEPTEMBER 10 /SRNA/ - Nadežda Stanojević /1887-1978/, the first Serbian woman pediatrician, author of several books in the field and a professor at the Midwifery School in Belgrade, was born on September 11, 1887.

She studied medicine in Petrograd and specialized in pediatrics in Paris. In Belgrade, she founded a counselling center for mothers and an infant dispensary.

When the First Balkan War broke out in 1912, Stanojević, like all female doctors in the Kingdom of Serbia, was mobilized and appointed head of the Reserve Military Hospital in Pirot, where she was also the only doctor.

In Pirot, she treated civilians as well as soldiers and officers.

At the beginning of the First World War, Stanojević was appointed head of the Reserve Military Hospital in Užice.

During the typhus epidemic in 1915, Stanojević contracted typhus herself while treating patients suffering from the disease, resulting in thrombosis in her left leg.

In the autumn of 1915, she was taken prisoner by the Austro-Hungarian forces. As a prisoner, Stanojević worked in the Surgical Department of an Austro-Hungarian military hospital.

In 1918, Stanojević travelled to Raška, the epicenter of a typhus epidemic, where she became head of the Internal Medicine Department of the Reserve Military Hospital. She primarily cared for Muslim women who did not allow male doctors to treat them.

Nadežda Stanojević, a recipient of the Order of St. Sava, died in 1978.