Forced by widespread outrage from doctors and progressive sections, the conservative New Democracy (ND)-led government in Greece, on May 3, decided to take back a controversial circular requiring doctors to be on-call duty. The circular was issued on April 28.
Intended to manage the shortage of doctors in public healthcare facilities in the country, the circular required available doctors to treat patients irrespective of their specialization, which doctors’ unions assert will put patients’ lives at risk and could also put doctors in trouble. The Federation of Hospital Doctors’ Unions Greece (OENGE) and the Athens and Piraeus Hospital Doctors’ Association (EINAP) had vociferously opposed the circular. The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the All Workers’ Militant Front (PAME) also expressed solidarity with the doctors’ protest.
The circular was issued in the backdrop of an acute shortage of doctors and medical staff in public sector medical care centers across the county. However, health workers claim that the government should instead recruit enough specialist doctors and staff and ensure decent pay scales and necessary funding for public health centers. Under the circular, “instead of a cardiologist, an available doctor; a gastroenterologist will be forced to treat a heart patient in distress,” the unions noted.
In a statement on May 2, OENGE said, “we are not going to become station masters, nor are we going to let hospitals become Tempi valleys,” referring to the tragic train collision in the country on February 28, in which 57 people were killed and 85 injured. Underfunding, privatization, and criminal negligence by the government and railway authorities were blamed for the deadly accident.
On May 3, the press office of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) stated, “While Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was proclaiming the ‘fair health policy’, the Ministry of Health was sending a recent despicable and dangerous circular–which he was forced to take back after the outcry–which forces the patients in hospitals to take treatment from unrelated specialists.”
“[This is] a foretaste of what this policy really is: a health system where the state will give even less and patients will pay even more for their needs to the crows of private groups and the commercialized public health sector,” added the KKE.
