Sick turned away as Kosovo doctors strike
PRISTINA (Reuters) - Thousands of Kosovo doctors went on strike Monday in state hospitals after failing to reach a deal for better conditions and more money, a situation that left the sick untreated.
The newly independent country that seceded from Serbia in February has around 13,000 health workers. Doctors earn 220 euros per month, nurses 147 euros.
“The strike will continue for days and weeks. We will not stop until our requests are fulfilled by the government,” said Jahir Mulolli, vice president of the Health Trade Union.
The union refused a deal offered by the government for a pay rise of 44 euros for the next three months. The union said they want a 50 percent raise and adoption of health insurance laws by the parliament.
At Pristina hospital doctors turned patients away and treated only emergency cases. “The doctors planned to perform surgery on my leg today. Now they say I have to wait until the strike ends,” Blerim Shaini said of his broken leg.
Kosovo has no health insurance and its government-run hospitals are in poor condition.
(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci, editing by Adam Tanner)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Related Posts:
By Michael Perry SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia’s public hospitals are unsafe, overcrowded and underfunded, resulting in 1,500 unnecessary deaths a year, a national doctors group said on Wednesday in a report titled “Public Hospitals Flatlining.” The Australian Medical Association (AMA) report said not one public hospital was operating at a safe international occupancy level and the hospital
Full Post: Australian public hospitals unsafe, say doctors
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain faces a “horrific” problem with hospital superbugs, entrepreneur Richard Branson said on Tuesday, accusing politicians and hospital bosses of tinkering with the problem but not doing enough to solve it. The Virgin Group chairman, speaking in his role as vice-president of the Patients Association, said one in 10 people who go into
Full Post: Branson slams Britain’s “horrific” MRSA problem
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Anthony J. Brown, MD NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Contrary to what many believe, people without medical insurance are not the primary cause of the overcrowding that is typical in emergency rooms at US hospitals, new research indicates. “There is a commonly held belief that uninsured patients abuse the emergency department, coming in for ‘non-urgent’ complaints,
Full Post: Uninsured not main reason for ER crowding
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In a survey of a random sample of U.S. emergency physicians, virtually all said they believed that law enforcement officers use excessive force to arrest and detain suspects. The sample included 315 respondents. While 99.8 percent believed excessive force is used, almost as many (97.8 percent) reported that they had managed
Full Post: Police use excessive force, ER docs say
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Because of long waits, some children who are brought to an emergency room never get treated before they and their caretakers have to leave. A new study reports that, in the US, about 2 percent of children who visit an emergency department leave before they are seen — about the same
Full Post: Some kids leave ER without getting needed care