Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Hospitals may be close to collapse, with Monday a decisive day. Slovak skies are protected like never before, the government says following the Przewodow incident. The news chief of RTVS leaves after a controversial Fico broadcast. The Slovak energy landscape changes.
Anxiety over hospital negotiations
Roughly one quarter of all doctors working in Slovakia’s understaffed hospitals are serving out their notice periods, and are thus set to leave their jobs as of December 1, when their resignations, submitted en masse at the initiative of the Doctors’ Trade Unions (LOZ), come into effect.
If the doctors do not withdraw their resignations, the resulting situation will be nothing short of a catastrophe for some hospitals in Slovakia. In fact, as December nears, patients in need of health care, hospital managers and doctors themselves, are following the negotiations between the LOZ and the government with growing anxiety.