Five hospitals located in the biggest towns in Slovakia joined protests by doctors across the Visegrad Group (V4) region. Their aim was to point to problems in the four countries’ public health-care systems, the SITA newswire reported.
The F.D. Roosevelt Hospital in Banská Bystrica, Ĺ˝ilina Hospital, the University Hospital of Louis Pasteur in Košice, the University Hospital in Bratislava – Kramáre and the Teaching Hospital in Prešov took part in the protests, whose main motto was “A Sick Health-Care System Threatens Everyone”. They called on Slovak Health Minister Zuzana Zvolenská to start dealing with the problem of not observing the rules included in the Labour Code and to stop silent tolerance of various non-standard solutions used by the managements of hospitals regarding overtime worked by doctors.
“Long-term tolerance of such a state is unbearable since the exhausted doctors are not good news for patient, said Peter Blaško, head of the LOZ doctors’ union branch in Ĺ˝ilina, as quoted by SITA, adding that if Slovakia wants to resolve the bad state of the health-care system, it should deal with the lack of doctors, but not only through “changes to the Labour Code and juggling with paragraphs”.
During the protest the local trade unions announced that members of LOZ will not submit mass resignations to their employers in the end of the year, SITA reported.
“Though we would like to spend Christmas with [our] families, we will stay in hospitals and will not submit a notice of termination,” Blaško said, as quoted by SITA. “We do not want to worsen the situation before the end of the year, [as] mostly the Slovak public does not deserve it in these hard times; therefore we chose the accommodating approach towards the Health Ministry.”
However, Blaško warned that the union had collected several termination notices from hospital doctors, which they are ready to use.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
