TIRANA, Jan. 19, 2023 – Isuf Kalo, one of Albania’s most renowned medical doctors and a key witness to the country’s communist history as the personal doctor of the former dictator, has passed away at the age of 80, his family has announced.
Professor Kalo was born in Albania’s southern Tepelenë region in 1942, finishing the Faculty of Medicine in Tirana University in 1964. He specialized in diabetology and endocrinology in several European universities and was a pioneer in that area for Albanian medicine. For several years he chaired the department of endocrinology and metabolic diseases in the Faculty of Medicine and in the University Hospital in Tirana.
After the fall of communism in 1991, until 2004, he went on to work for the World Health Organization in Copenhagen, heading the European Diabetes Program and later the Quality of Health System Programme in Europe.
Dr. Kalo is also known to the public at large in Albania for his writings and interviews related to the life of the country’s communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, providing a key account of Hoxha’s life and health as the dictator’s personal doctor until his death in 1985.
Dr. Kalo also had key access as a doctor to much of the communist leadership and his accounts have helped historians better explain certain aspects of what was the most brutal communist regime in Europe.
According to local media reports, Dr. Kalo had been ill for some time from a terminal disease, to which he succumbed on Jan. 19, 2023.
Many top public figures expressed their condolences and praised Dr. Kalo’s life.
“Professor Kalo was a personality of international proportions in medicine, an undisputed authority in the field of endocrinology,” Albanian President Bajram Begaj said in a statement. “My deepest condolences to his family, the many friends he had, the colleagues and students who found him a professional role model, and the many patients he devoted himself to.”
While Health Minister Ogerta Manastirliu noted that Dr. Kalo had been working to help the Albanian health system with ideas until the very last days, citing communications she had with him in December.
“The contribution of Professor Isuf Kalo has been invaluable for Albanian medicine, in the endocrinology service at Tirana University Hospital for several decades,” Manastirliu noted.
