ZAGREB, Croatia, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- A Croatian doctor who allegedly refused to treat a man with stroke symptoms because he is a Serb could lose his license to practice medicine, officials say.
The charges are being investigated by the Croatian Health Ministry and the police, the BBC reports. The complaint was made by the mayor of Vrhovina in central Croatia, who said he tried to persuade the doctor to refer the patient to a larger hospital.
The patient, Bosko Radic, was admitted to the clinic in the town last Sunday with what appeared to be symptoms of a stroke. The doctor on duty overnight told him to go home, local news media reported, saying there was nothing wrong with him.
The mayor said when he intervened, the doctor told him to "get out" and then called him a "Chetnik." The Chetniks were Serbian nationalist partisans during World War II, and the name has also been used for Serbian guerrillas during later conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.
Radic, an ethnic Serb, left Croatia during the civil war there but later returned. He was eventually admitted to a hospital, diagnosed as having had a stroke and then released.
