Health crisis deepens in Poland

The health crisis in Poland escalated at the weekend with over 40 seriously ill patients evacuated from a hospital in the southern city of Czestochowa in order to ensure their medical care would continue to be dealt with. Doctors from the hospital have resigned as a result of their demands for higher wages not being met.

In Poland a ridiculous slituation exists where a foreign teacher of the English language (like me) in a private school can earn up to 2 or 3 times the basic net salary of doctors, who receive just 1,500 zlotys (416 euros) per month. That works out at around 10 zlotys (2.6 euros) an hour - a rough deal after spending 7 years studying hard to take care of other people's health.

Associated Foreign Press report today that

Eighty four out of 173 doctors resigned after failing to reach a pay deal with management at the hospital in Czestochowa. They were due to stop working on Monday.

So stock up on antibiotics and fight them illnesses, now is not the time for your health to be declining.

And a word in the Polish government's ear - finance the doctors by giving yourselves and all the top government civil servants a wage cut, withdraw your troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and allocate the budget finance towards the health sector, and sell your F-16's to a scrap metal yard. You might get fuck all for the latter but at least you might reclaim some respect from human health and human rights activists.