[The first hospital facilities in Bosnia-Herzegovina]

Organized health service started by opening a mental asylum at the Sinan's Tekke in Sarajevo, 1768. Until then, the only health Institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina were apothecary shops that were mostly run by foreigners. Practically, the first qualified health personnel were apothecaries, while trained doctors were Franciscans, who in their monasteries treated the sick, translated medical books from foreign languages and founded medical libraries. Among the first trained physicians in Sarajevo were mainly Jews. Late in the nineteenth century the first Bosnians left for Istanbul and completed the medical studies. The first hospitals were founded thanks to the last Bosnian governor-vali Topal Sherif Osman-Pasha. From the funds of Ghazi Husrev-Bey's Waqf (endowment), he had the Waqf Hospital built for the civilian population and the Turkish Military Hospital for the army. The Waqf Hospital, after the Land's Hospital was established, became a hospital for the treatment of mental illnesses until 1909, when a mental hospital was founded within the Land's hospital. The Turkish Military Hospital was reconstructed and extended on several occasions over the Turkish period, and then during the Austro-Hungarian rule, too. At the time it was founded, the hospital was a modern structure built according to the West-European standards. Both of these structures were put under the State's Law on Monuments of Culture.