DOCTORS from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia held their first joint rally to show their dissatisfaction with the direction in which health-care systems in their countries are headed. Symbolic protests were organised by local medical trade unions, in which doctors met on November 20, at 12:05, for 30 minutes, to point out that the current state of health care conflicts with the needs of patients.
According to Milan Kubek, the head of the Czech Medical Chamber, all four of the countries suffer from the same problems: catastrophically low health-care expenditures and a sound level and availability of health care being achieved to the detriment of underpaid medical workers, the website of the Czech news channel ct24.cz wrote.
“All the states are facing, to varying degrees, tendencies toward commercialisation of health care and its full privatisation,” said Kubek.
