The Metropolitan Community Clinic at Hellinikon (a suburb in the south of Athens) provides FREE medical assistance to the UNEMPLOYED and POOR people without SOCIAL SECURITY or with very little income.
The greatness of humanity, dignity, mutual aid and support is evidenced daily in the actions of ordinary citizens – in contrast to the official state which has gone deaf these last years of the memorandum and its austerity.
So many independent groups pop up all the time to answer some of the needs of those without shelter or means. Community clinics and pharmacies appear and multiply in an effort to fill the immense void created by the official state and an effort to support public health – which the state has neglected.
Three years ago, unemployed and uninsured citizens ceased to have a place in the National Public Health System. Accounting has taken over (income, expenses) without centring the whole thing on the human individual.
It’s now an inhuman National Health System that runs a country where unemployment will likely reach 30% and a country which has been flooded by about a million uninsured immigrants. So a third of the population is medically totally unprotected. This system condemns to death those who have serious illnesses but no means to pay; it endangers all public health in the country – a country where a pregnant woman cannot afford a hospital at which to give birth and avoid the street.
Community Clinics and pharmacies are doing their utmost to plug the hole the state has left. But they cannot fully replace the state in providing primary health care; they most certainly cannot tackle more advanced care which necessitates hospitalization and surgery.
At this moment, there are ten patients in this one clinic who are in need of immediate
hospitalization. There are also pregnant women who cannot afford expenses of a birth at a maternity hospital. We are desperately trying to cope with an impossible situation.
- We DEMAND THAT PUBLIC HOPSITAL AND MATERNITY HOSPITALS OPEN THEIR DOORS to the unemployed and uninsured who cannot afford to pay. We believe in doing our best to protect the health of all individuals – in fact to protect public health itself.
- The Ministry of Health has to put into effect the program it proposed three months ago regarding uninsured patients and to stop “looking on” at what happens to these people.
- We must all work together to stop the annihilation of these vulnerable poor before it becomes a GENOCIDE.
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★ Contact: www.islinke.de (international socialist left / 4th International) ★
