Skip links

Skip to Content
play

Live

Navigation menu

  • News
    • Middle East
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • US & Canada
    • Latin America
    • Europe
    • Asia Pacific
  • Ukraine war
  • Features
  • Economy
  • Opinion
  • Video
    • Coronavirus
    • Climate Crisis
    • Investigations
    • Interactives
    • In Pictures
    • Science & Technology
    • Sports
    • Podcasts
play

Live

In Pictures

Gallery

In Pictures: One of Bulgaria’s oldest doctors in virus fight

Dr Maria Bogoeva is one of a legion of doctors battling ‘the horror’ of COVID-19 in Bulgaria.

Dr Maria Bogoeva, 82, puts on a mask during her shift in a COVID-19 unit in the hospital of Doupnitsa, a municipality with 50,000 inhabitants that is desperately lacking caregivers. [Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP]
Published On 2 Feb 20212 Feb 2021
facebooktwitterwhatsapp

Infectious disease specialist Dr Maria Bogoeva was ready to hang up her scrubs and retire from her post in a small provincial hospital in western Bulgaria when the coronavirus pandemic struck.

A year later, the 82-year-old is still on the COVID-19 front line despite her age, one of the oldest doctors known to still be practising in the country.

She is one of a legion of older medics battling “the horror” of the virus in Bulgaria’s overstretched healthcare system.

“My age? I don’t feel it. I want to work. If I see that I am no longer useful, I’ll bow out,” the energetic doctor says.

The European Union’s poorest member state suffers from a severe shortage of medical staff as young medical graduates emigrate to the West in search of better career opportunities.

So Bogoeva says she has little choice but to stay at the bedside of her COVID-19 patients in the municipal hospital in Dupnitsa, 60 kilometres (40 miles) southwest of the capital Sofia.

To sit at home doing nothing in good health at a time when patients need her expertise the most is simply “unthinkable”, she says.

“Was I supposed to let people die? The hospital had no other infection disease specialist, and this amid a healthcare crisis,” the doctor explains.

Many other elderly doctors across Bulgaria have made the same choice over the past year, some at the cost of their own lives.

Bogoeva’s colleague at the Dupnitsa hospital infectious ward, 15 years younger, feared for her health and retired after the first wave of the virus.

But the octogenarian says she is not afraid to stay on, dressed in a simple surgical mask and a blue overcoat that gets disinfected once in a while.

“They forbid me to approach the patients,” the doctor says, standing at the door of the ward.

Dr Bogoeva says there is something "inexplicable" about this virus and has seen the devastation it can wreak first-hand. [Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP]
Advertisement
She shudders at the memory of "the horror of November" when Dr Bogoeva says she saw more patients die then than during her entire career. "The people in their 60s, we could not save them." [Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP]
A patient with an oxygen mask rests in a COVID-19 unit in the hospital of Doupnitsa. [Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP]
"I probably have some natural immunity. I've lived through so many infections during my life," Dr Bogoeva says, adding she feels "no need to panic" about the virus. [Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP]
Her hospital was so overwhelmed there were patients "waiting in the hallways," Bogoeva recalls. "The ambulances, the family doctors were begging us [to admit more patients] but we were overcapacity." [Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP]
Bogoeva is appreciative of the current respite with only six patients in her ward because she knows it will not last long. A new wave caused by virus variants "is certainly coming," she predicts. [Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP]
Advertisement
An elderly man recovers in a COVID-19 unit in Doupnitsa's hospital. [Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP]
In the small town of Doupnitsa, Dr Bogoeva and other medical workers say they encounter fear more often than admiration. "People avoid us, they look at us as if we are extraterrestrials," she says with bitterness. [Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP]
Bogoeva's son lives in the United States along with her two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Her husband, meanwhile, moved to Sofia until the situation calms down. "So if I get infected, I will not harm anyone," she sighs. [Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP]


    • About Us
    • Code of Ethics
    • Terms and Conditions
    • EU/EEA Regulatory Notice
    • Privacy Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Cookie Preferences
    • Sitemap
    • Community Guidelines
    • Work for us
    • HR Quality
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise with us
    • Apps
    • Channel Finder
    • TV Schedule
    • Podcasts
    • Submit a Tip
    • Al Jazeera Arabic
    • Al Jazeera English
    • Al Jazeera Investigative Unit
    • Al Jazeera Mubasher
    • Al Jazeera Documentary
    • Al Jazeera Balkans
    • AJ+
    • Al Jazeera Centre for Studies
    • Al Jazeera Media Institute
    • Learn Arabic
    • Al Jazeera Centre for Public Liberties & Human Rights
    • Al Jazeera Forum
    • Al Jazeera Hotel Partners

Follow Al Jazeera English:

  • facebook
  • twitter
  • youtube
  • instagram-colored-outline
  • rss
Al Jazeera Media Network logo
© 2023 Al Jazeera Media Network