WARSAW, Sept 11 (Reuters) – Countless numbers of Poland’s health care staff marched via the streets of Warsaw on Saturday, demanding much better spend and situations as the country braces for a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Quite a few professional medical workers say coronavirus has laid bare failings in the country’s well being technique and that occupations in the sector are not desirable due to minimal wages and high stages of anxiety.
“We want good jobs and wages … I get the job done now for about 500 hrs a month, not for money, but simply because there is no a single to work,” said 41-calendar year-old paramedic Wojciech Zdanowski.
Brandishing banners with slogans these types of as “Together for the good of individuals” and “Unwell nation”, nurses, health professionals, physiotherapists and ambulance staff members, a lot of in uniform, collected near the Supreme Court docket prior to marching through the centre of the funds.
Their requires include things like larger wages, choosing a lot more administrative and help personnel and methods to shield against actual physical and verbal aggression.
Poland’s Overall health Minister Adam Niedzielski has dismissed the requires as way too expensive and unrealistic, involving an raise of around 105 billion zlotys ($27.31 billion) that would force health and fitness shelling out to about 10% of gross domestic product or service (GDP).
“Let’s be major, if at this minute we have a spending budget for wellness that is 120 or 130 billion zlotys and there is a demand to raise that by 100 billion… it goes totally outside of the bounds of excellent perception and rationale,” Niedzielski informed personal broadcaster Radio Zet on Friday.
In January 2020 a physician with a specialisation attained on regular virtually 14,000 zlotys a thirty day period in advance of tax, although nurses acquired among 5,700 and 6,600 zlotys, according to overall health ministry knowledge cited by day by day newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.
Poland, a state of all over 38 million, has so considerably described 2,893,173 scenarios of the coronavirus and 75,425 deaths.
($1 = 3.8441 zlotys)
Reporting by Alicja Ptak Crafting by Alan Charlish Modifying by Mike Harrison
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