Primary care physicians began a four-day strike in Catalonia starting on Tuesday to expose the collapse of the health care service
BARCELONA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th October, 2020) Primary care physicians began a four-day strike in Catalonia starting on Tuesday to expose the collapse of the health care service.
The medical workers are desperate due to overwork and a lack of resources. The number of physicians on strike has reached 5,900 and will affect more than 80 percent of primary care centers.
"We are desperate, we have been crying for help for several months and no one has responded. No one wants the strike, but we have to do something," Elena Bartolozzi, the secretary of the Medicos de Cataluna physicians' union, complained.
The lack of resources and medical staff combined with the overcrowding in hospitals due to the COVID-19 crisis has caused a situation in which physicians are not able to treat diseases unrelated to coronavirus.
The principal protesters' demands consist of an increase in the medical workforce to combat COVID-19, the supply of more resources for primary care centers and salary increases for medical workers.
The government of Catalonia was opposed to the strike, which the secretary of public health of the region, Josep Maria Argimon, described as "absolutely inopportune" due to the coronavirus crisis.
Catalonia is a region of Spain with the highest number of COVID-19 cases. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Catalonia has registered more than 161,000 cases, of which 26,203 have recovered and 5,883 have died.
