Heroes of 2020: People Who Made a Difference

In a year like no other, when a pandemic enveloped the world, special gratitude is due also to the doctors and medical workers who took the challenge head on, sparing no effort and risking their own lives to help others.

Bosnia's "Oxygen Man"

Miralem Sabic Mika. Illustration: BIRN/Igor Vujcic 

In a time of the pandemic and uncertainty, stories of human selflessness and sacrifice are especially significant.

Such is the story of Miralem Sabic Mika, a 57-year-old war veteran from the small Bosnian town of Konjic.

Mika works at the local hospital as a janitor, but volunteers in the isolation ward.

He has become a local hero for helping coronavirus patients breathe easier and for comforting them with warm words and laughter.

Early each morning, while Konjic is sleeping, Mika, or as they call him, the "Oxygen man", carries empty oxygen bottles on his back from the rooms where coronavirus positive people are staying.

Driving his old van, he transports the empty bottles from Konjic to the capital, Sarajevo, some 60 kilometres away, so they can be filled and reused.

On his return, Mika, who still has shrapnel in his lungs from the war in Bosnia, often carries the heavy bottles on his back to the second floor of an isolation centre. It has no elevator.

Fifty kilograms empty and 70 kilograms full - that's how heavy a bottle of oxygen is, which is enough for only an hour-and-a-half of air for the most difficult cases. It takes almost twice as long for a bottle like this to be delivered from Sarajevo to Konjic.

"Whoever we called to help us take the bottles to the second or third floor [of the isolation centre] turned us down. People are afraid. But it is not difficult for me....

Continue reading on: