Demonstration of doctors in Spain -

Alvaro Barrientos / AP / SIPA

Bloodless after having fought against the coronavirus pandemic for more than six months, the vast majority of Spanish public service doctors began a national strike on Tuesday, the first in twenty-five years, to demand more recognition.

Due to social distancing measures and the minimum service imposed by the authorities, there were only around fifty in Madrid to protest in front of Parliament, at the call of the National Confederation of Medical Unions (CESM).

Assign doctors wherever they want

But according to the CESM, around 85% of the 267,000 Spanish doctors took part in this strike, most of them symbolically while still providing their service.

This national movement in one of the countries most bereaved by the Covid-19 pandemic is a first in twenty-five years, while the mobilizations of doctors are usually regional in Spain, the regions being competent in health matters.

According to Sergio Casabona, gastroenterologist present in front of Parliament, “the straw that broke the camel's back” for caregivers suffering from the fight against Covid-19 was a decree, published at the end of September, which makes it possible to affect the doctors, whatever their specialty, to other hospital services as needed.

A reform motivated by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Ministry of Health.

"An attack on Spanish public health"

For the CESM, this measure is "the most important attack perpetrated against Spanish (public) health".

Spaced several meters apart, the demonstrators, dressed in white coats and wearing FFP2 masks, held signs showing a group of patients with their doctor about to be run over by a military boot with the caption "National strike, let's save Health ".

For Pablo Cereceda, digestive surgeon, it is a "botched decree which reveals the inability (of the authorities) to face this pandemic".

Sergio Casabona criticizes him for political decisions taken "without consultation with professionals", referring in particular to the Isabel Zendal hospital, nicknamed "the pandemic hospital" built "in record time" by the region of Madrid which must 'inaugurate very soon.

A budget increased by 151%

"It is not a hospital, but a building, without personnel", the doctor gets angry, while the doctors wonder about the human resources which will be allocated to this hospital when all the others are already short of personnel.

In this context, the Spanish government announced on Tuesday that the budget for public health would be increased by 151%, with an allocation of around three billion euros additional, of which 2.4 billion will come from the European recovery plan and will be intended for the purchase of vaccines and the strengthening of the public network of general practitioners.

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