Greeks will be forced to cure illness and diseases with …home remedies as pharmacists will launch a 48-hour strike on Thursday and Friday, March 8th and 9th 2012. Taking into consideration that pharmacies are closed on Saturday and Sunday, queues are expected to be quite long when they open again. The Panhellenic Federation of Pharmacists say this is a warning strike and threaten to launch more mobilization. With the strike, Greek pharmacists protest payment delays by the insurance funds, the degradation of the medicine care. Further they demand the immediate solution to the problem of “medicine shortages”.
At the same time, unions of health materials decided to stop supply public hospitals (ESY) until March 12, 2012. Public hospital paid their debts to suppliers with Greek bonds at the end of 2010. Now the suppliers want the bonds they hold to be excluded from the Collective Action Clauses (CACs). If the bonds will be be forced to participate in the Greek Bond Swap (PSI), “many suppliers’ enterprises will have to close down”, say the unions in a statement.
Actually, your article is misleading as there will always be emergency pharmacies open 24 hours a day in every area, and the Airport Pharmacy never closes.
my article is misleading? have you tried an emergency pharmacy on a strike day? not to mention the kilometers one has to cover to reach it? In my misleading article, I forgot to mention that pharmacies ‘block’ patients from certain insurance funds from prescription medicine on credit. Patients have to pay from their own pockets and ask the money from the insurance funds. When they will pay? God knows… As we have a chronic ill in the family, I can tell you a whole book about patients being the victims of the war between the health ministry and pharmacists, doctors, pharma companies, IKA @ Co. Waiting time: 5 weeks for IKA appointment, 4 weeks for 3 boxes of prescription medicine from the pharmacy.
It is a disgrace that in a civilised country sick people should be used as pawns and deprived of life saving drugs/treatment. Had all the billions that was spent on unnecessary and corrupt defense projects been used to modernise the Greek health service for it’s citizens then we would be in a happier place.
Why can’t the Greek people be cared for in the same way as the Germans, the Dutch, the Finns etc? I thought that equality was one of the goals of the EUSSR – it just seems that living under this super state dictatorship some countries are more equal than others.
sorry, my comment wasn’t trying to accuse, just wanted to say that if you really need an emergency medicine like Blood Pressure pills as I take, you can find it. For routine issues, it may be inconvenient, but the strike hopefully won’t cause any deaths or injuries. However, if it does, then the prosecuter should look into prosecuting the organizers of the strike if anyone was not able to get their emergency medicine on time.
Another demonstration of why Greece is in trouble.