Diploma of doctor of medicine Kornelija Sertić, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, 30th November 1923. inv. nr. HMMF-253

Kornelija Sertić

Kornelija Sertić (Sv. Ivan Zelina, 1897 – Zagreb, 1988), prim. Dr. Nela Ibler-Sertić, was among the first female phsycisct who graduated from the Medical School in Zagreb. From 1924 to 1928 she worked at the Epidemiological Institute, led by Dr. Berislav Borčić, then at the States child’s dispensary in Zagreb as an assistant; specializes in pediatrics in Zagreb and as a scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation, at the Clinic for preventive child tuberculosis in Paris. From 1928 to 1931 she specializes in tuberculosis and pulmonary diseases at the state health resort in Topolšica and in antituberculatory dispensary in Zagreb and works at the Zagreb school polyclinic as a vice president. At the impetus of prof. Dr. Andrija Štampar she organizes the Home of national health at Sušak and health centers in the Croatian Littoral. From 1930 to 1943 she works as a senior attendant and health supervisor at the Antituberculotic dispensary at Trešnjevka in Zagreb.

During the Second World War she supported her family as a doctor to members of the Croatian Chamber of Trades and Crafts. In a private clinic in Hatz street 17, she received patients and as a skilled clinician gives pneumothorax to patients with tuberculous caverns. Some of the patients from Zagreb surroundings have been treated for free. After the end of the war, she was the head of the Health center “Trešnjevka” in Zagreb and after a chief physician and a head director of the Hospital for pulmonary diseases and TBC of lungs at Rockefeller Street in Zagreb.

As a fellow of L´Union internationale contre la tuberculose in 1948 she was in Copenhagen for the study of BCG vaccination and suppression of tuberculosis. She was the president of the TBC section of the Red Cross of Croatia and for her professional and social work she received many awards.