Azithromycin or Sumamed is the most important pharmaceutical product ever produced in Croatia.

The last week my doctor prescribed me Sumamed or Azithromycin, so since I know a scientist which was in team who invented Sumamed, here is a story about.

The team of Croatian scientists in Pliva, Zagreb, Croatia, which discovered Azithromycin or Sumamed in 1980: Gabrijela Kobrehel, Slobodan Đokić, Gorjana Radobolja-Lazarevski and dr. Zrinka Tamburašev.

Azithromycin is an antibiotic useful for the treatment of bacterial infections. It is an azalide, a subclass of macrolide antibiotic. It is derived from erythromycin, with a methyl-substituted nitrogen atom incorporated into the lactone ring, thus making the lactone ring 15-membered. Azithromycin is somewhat more potent against certain bacterial species than erythromycin, but its widespread popularity arises primarily from its slow elimination from the body, which allows many infections to be treated with 3-5 days of once-daily administration, compared to 3-4 times a day for up to two weeks for erythromycin.
 Azithromycin or Sumamed is one of the world's best-selling antibiotics, used to treat or prevent certain bacterial infections, most often those causing middle ear infections, strep throat, pneumonia, typhoid, bronchitis and sinusitis. It has been discovered Croatia's capital Zagreb in 1980, by a team of researchers at the Croatian pharmaceutical company Pliva: Gabrijela Kobrehel, Gorjana Radobolja-Lazarevski, and Zrinka Tamburašev, led by Dr. Slobodan Đokić. They are recipients of the 2000 award Heroes of Chemistry by the American Chemical Society in Washington, USA. The patent rights expired in 1999.  Croatia is one of only nine countries in the world with its own antibiotic product.