Healthcare staff and nursing personnel in Greece’s public hospitals will launch a 24-hour strike in the region and a work stoppage from 8.00 to 15.00 in Athens on Wednesday, March 19, 2025, the Panhellenic Federation of Employees in Public Hospitals (POEDIN) has announced.
A protest at 8.30 am at Mavili Square and a rally to the Ministries of Finance and Health is scheduled for Athens on Wednesday morning.
“The public health system is at the limits of its capacity due to serious staff shortages,” the Federation said in a lengthy statement, noting that in the emergency departments of the on-call-hospitals “there is chaos”.
Since the end of the pandemic until today, we have 4,000 fewer staff in the National Health System, despite announcements on hiring.
“The wave of mass resignations is related to unfavorable working conditions, work exhaustion, constant travel and low wages,” POEDIN underlined.
Among others, the Federation criticized the low salaries, the long waiting time exceeding 8 hours in emergencies of big hospitals, the inseparability prevails in the pathological and pulmonary clinics of the emergency rooms, the shortcomings of primary care in rural and urban health centers from where personnel is transferred to hospitals to fill vacancies, the shortage of skilled rescuers, the inabilities in the performance of diagnostic tests.
“More than 50% of incoming patients and admissions to the Hospitals of Attica and Thessaloniki are from the region. This highlights the serious shortcomings of the regional Hospitals that are not able to hold the patients of the region that are developed.
In our country, 3.5 beds operate per 1,000 inhabitants while the average in the countries of the European Union is 5.3 beds per 1,000 inhabitants.”
POEDIN also lambasts the fact the patients often have to pay for doctor visits and prescriptions, while they are forced to seek the private medical and diagnostic sector.
PS As workers, employees, self-employed and free-lances mandatory pay health care contributions public health care should be with no cost for them. Starting with the bailout agreements in 2010, cuts in the Health Care sector was the first target of the country’s lenders, a policy that continues under the neo-liberal government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis even though he has been hailing that “the bailout agreements were over.”
One of the problems in the last 2-3 years is, however, that together with the public health care also the private sector is going down.
