Galery

1

Doctors in hospitals went on strike, which will continue until the end of the week. During the strike additional staff will work in the hospitals. “The strike began yesterday and at least 70% of doctors in rural hospitals took part in it,” said Dimitris Varnavas - President of the Federation of Unions of Hospital Doctors in Greece, which organized the strike.

In the Attica region, only doctors from government hospitals Nike, Attica, Red Cross and Saint Olga joined the strikers. The Union of Physicians from Athens and Piraeus did not join the Federation of Unions of Doctors and decided to strike for 24 hours tomorrow, when the  criticized bill will be voted. On this occasion, they announced a protest meeting in front of the Parliament at 11 o’clock. Doctors from private hospitals will take part in the protest too.

The main request of doctors is the bill, which provides hospitals to work full time, to be withdrawn. According to Mr. Varnavas, this will lead the health care services to be implemented on private base. The second reason for the strike are regulations that change the duty roster system. Doctors state they do not agree to go on duty more than four times a month, which is already happening without their consent, but by administrative order. Their request is to get paid for the duties on time and these payments to be entirely allocated from the budget.

According to the draft, every doctor will receive a monthly benefit for a specified number of duties. When the doctor was on more duties the payment should be made from the revenues of the hospital, which it will gain because of its full-time functioning. According to the Ministry of Health the monthly allowance will be given for a number of duties, which corresponds to 90% of the needs of hospitals, but doctors disagree. The duties stipulated in view of the allowances are enough to cover only 50% of the hospital needs and major problems will occur in the provincial hospitals that lack staff, said Dr. Panos Papanikolau for Kathimerini Newspaper. The doctors think the new system would worsen the problem of unpaid duties and they say they are ready not to perform duty roster over the monthly number, if the hospital management is not bound to allocate resources to secure them their financially.

At the same time, the new law will require the directors of state hospitals to submit a declaration of their property. Тhe Federation of Unions of Hospital Ddoctors repeatedly insisted the law to stipulate all doctors to submit property declarations. Тhe doctors in Attica hospital, who also went on strike this week, started to reveal to auditors the state of their bank accounts on a subscription ten days ago. The new law regulation on property declaration of hospital managers is part of the plan to fight corruption, but the doctors wish to apply this to all doctors, not just to the managers.