Doctors ready to strike: "The NHS will fail"

Doctors are on a war footing. And when they get angry, our NHS trembles… Because they have been a mature category since time immemorial, they always form a single block, even when they hate each other, they understand each other with a simple glance and if they threaten to go on strike… They risk crossing paths hands seriously.

And in October there could be quite a few inconveniences, as declared by the national secretary Anaao Assomed Carlo Palermo (during the press conference of the Inter-union yesterday in Rome after the meeting on Wednesday with the Minister of Health Giulia Grillo), who explained how the service public live a “critical moment with a worrying picture”, which brought the union representatives of doctors to “interrupt today the technical interlocution for the renewal of the contract with Aran and to proclaim it state of unrest, with one or more days of strike in October to be defined. It's a national demonstration in Rome with sit-ins in front of Parliament, Aran and the Regions”.

The reasons? According to Palermo “We are living a critical moment for the NHS with a serious underfunding and the news arriving in these hours from the government for the Def is not good, it is a question of having incremental funding to give all the treatments and the Regions the opportunity to expand the offers. Furthermore, it's time to close a contract for doctors that has been inactive since 2010. These are not corporate issues, the relationship with Aran (Agency for the negotiating representation of public administrations) went on for many months, but our contract certainly does not have funding for 2018".

Secretary Anaao Assomed also underlined: “There is no perspective and doctors leave the system and do so before retirement because the work is heavy and there are many nights to cover. It's hard to go in holidays and this becomes the object of confrontation between colleagues. There are some colleagues at the end of their career who have accumulated a year of vacation”.

This, however, was the point of view of Guido Quici, president of Cimo: “the Regions profited from savings in personnel costs, I'm glad that the negotiation with Aran failed because it couldn't have gone like this. I remember that in the next few years there will be a shortage of 7,000 doctors every yearespecially family doctors. We cannot worsen working conditions, it increases insecurity for the patient and so he cannot go on".

And there are also those who, like the secretary of Sivemp (union of public veterinarians) Aldo Grasselli, make very bad predictions: “As things stand, the NHS will fail. Answers are needed, otherwise the system will collapse”.

None of this would surprise us… Unfortunately.

Alessio Biondino