National Nurses United

Greek_JulAug 2/9/12 5:14 PM Page 18 of €5 at medical clinics, and all the costs of their public hospital treatment. The deepening economic crisis has seen a dramatic rise in public hospital and medical clinic admissions, as deep salary cuts and soaring unemployment force people out of private insurance. This has added a growing burden of care on the NHS, which is already under tremendous strain. According to a July statement by the Genoa Initiative of Hospitals, a medical professionals action group, the cuts are so severe they will effectively "dismantle the NHS." In new measures announced in July by health minister Andreas Loverdos, the government proposes to close 20 hospitals and 330 medical clinics, and merge 133 administration hospitals into 83 as a first step. More mergers and cuts are scheduled for the future. Hospital administration centers will be reduced from 92 to 22, and 13,000 hospital beds will close across Greece. Some 600 doctors and nurses' positions will be transferred or cut. One doctor told the BBC that the "cuts are so severe to our public health system, that we will see deaths occurring as a direct result of their implementation." According to medical workers, the Greek public hospital system is already stretched to the breaking point. In March 2011, when the Union of Xanthi Doctors warned in writing that defective pegs used to close the arteries of umbilical cords were putting the lives of newborns at risk, the hospital's head administrator, Ati Bampalidis, threatened them with prosecution - even though doctors had photos to provide as evidence. On June 25, a newborn nearly died because of a defective umbilical peg. The hospital's union said that the baby had lost 50 percent of its blood, but a "superhuman effort by doctors and nurses of the Hospital of Xanthi and the neonatal intensive care unit in Alexandropoulos miraculously managed to save the newborn baby's life." The quality and supply of medicines is also a major concern of medical personnel. "Pharmaceutical suppliers have stopped delivering drugs to our hospitals because the government has not being paying their bills, so we are using copies, which are much cheaper, but second- or third-rate quality compared with originals," said registered nurse Melina Papas, from Heraklion, Crete.(Papas' name as well as the names of all registered nurses in this story, except for Manias, have been changed to protect their jobs; public-sector nurses are under government orders not to speak to the media or risk getting fired.) Some of the hospitals slated for closure serve the most vulnerable Greeks. One such facility is the General Hospital of Patisia, located in downtown Athens. It is an area crowded with low-income Greek families, workers, and the unemployed, alongside communities of North African and Middle Eastern refugees living a marginal existence in neighborhoods fast becoming ghettoised. At a July 7 meeting, Patisia General Hospital employees resolved to fight the closure with strike action, rallies, and the mobilization of all hospital workers and medical professionals from the ground up to demand that Greek health minister Andreas Loverdos repeal the new NHS measures. In the week after the meeting, the hospital and doctors union staged a four-hour work stoppage and demonstration on July 14 outside the Health Ministry in central Athens. The hospital workers union took similar action July 20 followed by targeted actions outside the health ministry and participation in general strikes, which rolled on through the fall and into winter. "This attack is very strong, but doctors, nurses, and other staff have the power together to stop it," said Chris Argyris of the Genoa Initiative. 18 N AT I O N A L N U R S E "We are lacking the basics, such as needles, surgical gloves, sterile equipment, bed linens, even toilet paper! Some nurses have been buying supplies from pharmacies out of their own salaries. We are also dealing with major staff shortages, with one nurse being allocated to care for 35 or 40 patients." E ven after his first run-in with the riot police, Manias, the registered nurse, left the tent for a second time, accompanied by a doctor and two first aid volunteers, to convince the police to stop throwing tear gas at the first aid station. But the cops were relentless. "The riot police threw chunks of marble stones and chemical canisters at us," recounted Manias. "I fell down and then they came from behind and beat my legs with batons. I could not get up, I could not walk, because at the same time I was being hit with stones and we were engulfed in a cloud of chemicals." First aid volunteer Barbara Doukas also came out of the tent and asked the police for a corridor to evacuate the injured, but the police just escalated their attacks. Dr. Meletis Kiriakou, a pulmonary specialist who was treating patients with severe respiratory dysfunctions, then exited the tent with a megaphone, identified himself as a doctor and the tent as a medical station, and implored the riot police to "please respect the first aid station." The police responded by throwing more canisters of tear gas as well as stun grenades directly at the station entrances. "One grenade landed half a meter from the oxygen tank, another landed on the tent wall, causing a fire," he said. W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G DECEMBER 2011

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