Greece: layoffs of unvaccinated health workers amid 100 daily deaths

Otherwise, as an absurdity, the situation with the dismissal of unvaccinated doctors cannot be called. Thousands of patients across the country may be left without primary care and adequate treatment.

The government’s attitude has already brought hospitals to their knees – a shortage of staff is depriving the remaining employees of vacations and days off, and even quarantine days for the sick have been reduced to a minimum. The decision to fire private doctors, in accordance with law 4820/2021, will critically aggravate the situation to the limit. And this at a time when every day the country mourns the death of an average of a hundred of its fellow citizens!

The closure of private clinics threatens to deprive the population of any protection from the “walking” coronavirus in the country – both the super-infectious strain of Omicron and the Delta holding its positions, which still ruthlessly sends the sick to intensive care units.

The plans of the Ministry of Health to lay off some 15,000 doctors in the public and private sectors can be safely described as sacrificing the lives of thousands of citizens by the coronavirus, leaving them hostage to the pandemic. The September decision of the government last year was justified to some extent. But today, when people are dying from a lack of doctors and places in intensive care units, such a move can be called criminal.

The level of immunization in the country is a really important and serious problem. However, along with it, there is an equally important one – people die in the absence of proper assistance. They arrive late in hospitals and do not receive the necessary treatment after hospitalization.

The government’s decision does not fix health problems, but exacerbates them, reducing the number of experienced doctors and nurses, as well as reducing the number of private family doctors providing significant support to understaffed public services.

The situation in the regions is even more catastrophic. It is not difficult to understand what the dismissal of a “family doctor” means in remote villages, for example, where the main percentage of the inhabitants are elderly people. But in connection with this, it is difficult to explain the logic of the actions of top-level officials and come to terms with this.

There is one more question on the agenda: where will the dismissed doctors go? Not all countries in the European Union are “scattered” by experienced healthcare professionals due to coronavirus vaccinations. As a result of the short-sighted policy of the Greek Ministry of Health, dozens of doctors already offer their services in the national systems of other states EU.

In January alone, Greece mourned over 2,700 deaths, continuing to lose a hundred of its citizens every day. In the face of a brutal situation, chaos in the field of health must be recognized as a fait accompli, and the current government of Mitsotakis and specifically the Minister of Health Thanos Pleuris act as reality deniers, unable to recognize the existence of existing problems, and even less to cope with them.

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