Services under strain, sick carers, lack of staff and resources: the health crisis has revealed the long-standing failures of the Polish health system and has caused hospital staff to be fed up. They announced a national strike on September 11 to ask for substantial financial support, an increase in salaries and above all to make the government react.
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The country has indeed been in the throes of a serious health crisis since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic. At the height of the second wave, in October 2020, more than 12,000 infections per day led doctors and hospital officials to sound the alarm. With 238 doctors and 510 nurses per 100,000 inhabitants, Poland has one of the lowest medical levels in the European Union. Staff are also aging, more than a quarter are at least 60 years old. A staff shortage that lurks and pushed the State to requisition doctors up to 65 years old during the crisis and to turn to foreign professionals.
Polish emergencies nicknamed sewers
A year before the pandemic, Polish doctors were already alerting the government to the risks of the country’s health system overheating, speaking of catastrophe
. Katarzyna Pikulska, emergency doctor and president of the Skalpel collective expressed itself in terms that at least reflect the concerns: In the business, emergencies are nicknamed sewers because we are the last resort. Patients who are rejected by the system and who cannot receive care within a reasonable time come to us. I myself am an orthopedic surgeon but I work in the emergency room because there is a lack of specialized emergency physicians. This is how the administration fills in the gaps
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In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, the Polish administration had urgently improvised a field hospital within the national stadium in Warsaw, capable of accommodating 300 patients. An action that left the country’s doctors rather skeptical. Indeed, if this establishment offers better salaries, it tries to poach staff working in local communities, already in a situation of medical deserts. More broadly, denouncing the alarming situation of the whole of the Polish health system, in the hospital in particular, the nursing staff will therefore be on strike on September 11.
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