## The Hospital: Months in Czechoslovakia and Then Belgrade
The initial medical care Vesna Vulović received was in Czechoslovakia, the country where the crash had occurred. She was treated in a Prague hospital — receiving surgery, intensive care, and the kind of ongoing medical management that her extensive injuries required.
She remained at the Prague hospital until March 12, 1972 — approximately six weeks after the crash. On that date she was flown to Belgrade, the capital of the country whose airline she had been working for when the crash occurred. She traveled under some form of medical escort; this was a patient transfer of significant complexity given the extent of her injuries.
In Belgrade she was placed under police protection. The crash had occurred in the context of suspected terrorist activity, and the Yugoslav government’s interest in her welfare was not purely humanitarian. She was a witness and a survivor in what was being treated as a criminal investigation as well as an aviation accident. The security around her care reflected both genuine concern for her safety and the investigative significance of her survival.
She was hospitalized in Belgrade until June 1972 — approximately five months after the crash. The recovery required multiple surgeries over that period. The operations addressed the damage to her vertebrae, her legs, her skull, and the other injuries she had sustained. Each surgery was a further trauma to a body that was already severely compromised.
Following her hospital discharge, she recuperated at a seaside resort on the Montenegro coast. This detail — recovery at a coastal resort — might seem incongruous given the severity of what she had endured, but it reflects the specific geography and culture of socialist Yugoslavia, where the Adriatic coast was a genuine national amenity, and the physical and psychological benefits of a different environment from the hospital were understood.