Free clinics, doctors try to patch growing holes in Greece's safety net

The economic crisis in Greece has left hospitals and other healthcare providers underfinanced and understaffed, forcing the ill to rely on friends and ...

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Greece's hospital of hope

Elpis Hospital in Athens strives against all odds to treat as many patients as possible amid grave healthcare crisis.

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Greek hospital patient gets suspended jail sentence for racially abusing emergency ward doctor

A Greek man has been convicted of a racist verbal assault on a Nigerian-born doctor who gave him emergency treatment.

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Health Clinic in Northern Greece Treats the Poor

Social health clinic “Hygeia” in Thessaloniki provides relief to around 350 poor and uninsured Greek citizens. The clinic is even visited by parents who are unable to pay for a pediatrician and regular check-ups required for infants. The clinic belongs to the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Neapolis and Stavroupolis, and has been operational since 2013. The staff consists of volunteer doctors. According to the clinic’s communication officer, Maria Charalambidou, 50 to 60 children are brought to the clinic every week. “We are facing a great problem. Children are not only coming in if they are sick, but also for their regular vaccination,” she said. Furthermore, Greek NGO “MissionAnthopos” also performs vaccinations every two months. Explaining the clinic’s operational plan, Charalambidou noted: “We provide medicine to our patients. We have created a pharmacy, where 6,100 drugs are available. We are also supported by a large private diagnostic center that offers us free tests.” Furthermore, as of March 2015, the scientific team will offer free tests for Alzheimer’s disease and psychological support to people suffering from depression or other illnesses.

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Tim Winton: 'By the time I was five I knew. Hospital was trouble'

Many of lifes extreme human moments, good and bad, take place in hospitals but how do we really feel about them? Acclaimed Australian novelist Tim Winton explores his own complicated attitude to an institution that has loomed large in his lifeIn 1995, veteran folk singer Loudon Wainwright III released a typically mordant song in which he catalogued the births, breakdowns, deaths and near misses of friends and family. Somehow all the health campuses of memory coalesce as a single monolithic entity, a site of inescapable mortality. That hospital, Wainwright senses, will never be done with him; it will always be there, waiting.Hospital. The word itself carries historical notions of shelter, respite and hospitality. The modern institution remains a refuge, a place of deliverance. Its a bulwark against chaos. Anyone whos ever needed a hospital in a hurry knows the other-worldly sanctuary it promises. In the Greek islands 30 years ago I once sat in a small boat holding my infant sons scalp together with my thumbs as we beat into a gale towards the prospect of harbour and hospital. Although the clinic we were trying so desperately to reach was a seedy little affair Id previously avoided, during that rocky passage it became in my mind a citadel of hygiene and expertise. In extremis, we yearn for that hospital, and yet at any other time, if youre anything like me, the very word brims with dread. Like the ageing Canadian strummer, I have a lifelong preoccupation with that hospital, an aversion I refuse to call a phobia.A pale and wizened creature was carried into our house If I squinted a little he looked a bit like my dadI imagined limbs plastered into gothic contortions, bandaged heads in which black mouths gaped and pulsed like anemonesSuffering is supposed to be ennobling but being in hospital could make even a saint cruel and peevish Continue reading...

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The Abortion Conversation We Need To Have

Abortion. We need to talk about it. I know, sometimes it seems as if we talk of little else, so perhaps I should say we need to talk about it differently. Not as something we all agree is a bad thing about which we shake our heads sadly and then debate its precise degree of badness, preening ourselves on our judiciousness and moral seriousness as we argue about this or that restriction on this or that kind of woman. We need to talk about ending a pregnancy as a common, even normal, event in the reproductive lives of women -- and not just modern American women either, but women throughout history and all over the world, from ancient Egypt to medieval Catholic Europe, from today's sprawling cities to rural villages barely touched by modern ideas about women's roles and rights. Abortion takes place in Canada and Greece and France, where it is legal, performed by medical professionals, and covered by national health insurance, and also in Kenya, Nicaragua, and the Philippines, where it is a crime and a woman who terminates a pregnancy takes her life in her hands. According to anthropologists, abortion is found in virtually every society, going back at least 4,000 years. American women had great numbers of abortions throughout our history, when it was legal and when it was not. Consider this: At the beginning of the nineteenth century effective birth control barely existed and in the 1870s it was criminalized -- even mailing an informational pamphlet about contraceptive devices was against the law and remained so until 1936. Yet the average number of births per woman declined from around 7 in 1800 to around 3.5 in 1900 to just over 2 in 1930. How do you think that happened? We need to see abortion as an urgent practical decision that is just as moral as the decision to have a child -- indeed, sometimes more moral. Pro-choicers often say no one is "pro-abortion," but what is so virtuous about adding another child to the ones you're already overwhelmed by? Why do we make young women feel guilty for wanting to feel ready for motherhood before they have a baby? Isn't it a good thing that women think carefully about what it means to bring a child into this world -- what, for example, it means to the children she already has? We tend to think of abortion as anti-child and anti- motherhood. In media iconography, it's the fetus versus the coat hanger: that is, abortion kills an "unborn baby," but banning it makes women injure themselves. Actually, abortion is part of being a mother and of caring for children, because part of caring for children is knowing when it's not a good idea to bring them into the world. We need to put abortion back into its context, which is the lives and bodies of women, but also the lives of men, and families, and the children those women already have or will have. Since nearly 1 in 5 American women end their childbearing years without having borne a child (compared with 1 in 10 in the 1970s), we need to acknowledge that motherhood is not for everyone; there are other ways of living a useful, happy life. We need to talk about abortion in its full human setting: sex and sexuality, love, violence, privilege, class, race, school and work, men, the scarcity of excellent, respectful reproductive health care, and of realistic, accurate information about sex and reproduction. We need to talk about why there are so many unplanned and unwanted pregnancies -- which means we need to talk about birth control, but also about so much more than that: about poverty and violence and family troubles, about sexual shyness and shame and ignorance and the lack of power so many women experience in bed and in their relationships with men. Why is it such a huge big deal to ask a man to wear a condom? Or for a man to do so without being asked? Why do so many women not realize they are pregnant until they are fifteen or twenty or even twenty-five weeks along, and what does that say about the extraordinary degree of vigilance we demand women exercise over their reproductive systems? And speaking of that vigilance, what about the fact that some 16 percent of women, according to a Brown University study, have experienced reproductive coercion in at least one relationship -- a male partner who used threats or violence to control a woman's contraception or pregnancy outcomes -- with a remarkable 9 percent experiencing "birth control sabotage," a male partner who disposed of her pills, poked holes in condoms, or pre- vented her from getting contraception. One-third of the women reporting reproductive coercion also reported partner abuse in the same relationship.4 Behind America's high rate of unintended pregnancy -- almost half of all pregnancies -- and high rates of abortion lies a world of hurt. We need to talk about the scarcity of resources for single mothers and even for two-parent families, and the extraordinary, contradictory demands we make upon young girls to be simultaneously sexually alluring and withholding: hot virgins. We need to talk about blood and mess and periods and pregnancy and childbirth and what women go through to bring new life into the world and whether deep in our hearts we believe that those bodies mean women were put on Earth to serve and sacrifice and suffer in a way that men are not. Because when we talk about abortion as a bad thing, and worry that there's too much of it, sometimes we mean there's too much unwanted pregnancy and that women and men need more and better sex education and birth control, and sometimes we mean there's too much poverty, especially for children and their mothers, but a lot of the time we mean a woman should have a good cry, and then do the right thing and have the baby. She can always put it up for adoption, can't she, like Juno in the movie? And that is close to saying that a woman can have no needs, desires, purpose, or calling so compelling and so important that she should not set it aside in an instant, because of a stray sperm. Abortion has been legal across the United States for more than four decades. More than a million abortions are per- formed every year -- some 55 million since 1973, when Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. A few facts: By menopause, 3 in 10 American women will have terminated at least one pregnancy; about half of all US women who have an abortion have already had a prior abortion; excluding miscarriages, 21 percent of pregnancies end in abortion. Contrary to the popular stereotype of abortion-seeking women as promiscuous teen- agers or child-hating professionals, around 6 in 10 women who have abortions are already mothers. And 7 in 10 are poor or low-income. Abortion, in other words, is part of the fabric of American life, and yet it is arguably more stigmatized than it was when Roe was decided. Excerpted from "Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights" by Katha Pollitt. Pro copyright © 2014 by Katha Pollitt. Published October 14, 2014, by Picador USA. All rights reserved. www.picadorusa.com/pro To buy a copy of Pollitt's book head over to Amazon.

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Clinic Director Arrested for Bribery

The Director of the Gynaecological Clinic of «Agios Dimitrios» hospital in Thessaloniki, Greece, has been arrested earlier this morning, as he demanded a payoff in order to proceed with one of his patient’s surgery. The doctor, who asked for 50 euros and is now facing charges of bribery, was given the marked note of 50 euros during an arranged meeting with his patient, who has earlier filed a complaint against him. Straight after he received the marked note, Greek Police arrested the doctor and found the marked note in his possession. This was the second bribery incident in a Thessaloniki public hospital within a short period of time and the officials appear worried by the frequency of such instances. Last month, police arrested the director of the Pediatric Surgery Clinic of «G. Genimatas» Hospital in Thessaloniki after a complaint from a patient that the doctor would not proceed with the necessary operation unless he would bribe him with 1,000 euros. The defendant -who was an academic doctor- appeared before the prosecutor and was later released from custody with a 10,000-euro bail.

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Greeks Still Pay Bribes To Be Treated Properly In State Hospitals

Even as they remain incapable of covering most of their basic needs, many Greeks are still forced to give “fakelakia” (bribes) to public hospital doctors in order to be treated properly and on time. One of the more surprising aspects of Greece’s crisis has been the steady enrichment of many public hospital doctors as a result of such bribes. Patients, meanwhile, are struggling through some of the most difficult times of their lives. This is all proven by the fact that Greeks pay almost twice as much in bribes as they do for actual health services, according to a stream of new data. According to official figures recorded by the National Statistic Service, ELSTAT, Greek households currently pay more than 119 million euros out of their own pockets for doctors. George Vogiatzis, scientific director of Genesis Pharma, analyzed and explained the ELSTAT data in the following way: “The private payments (from individuals), despite the crisis and the dramatic reduction in their income to public hospitals, have increased. This – to some extent – may be attributed to the increased costs for afternoon clinics and the introduction of a ticket of 5 euros for each patient’s visit.” But Vogiatzis argues that the net cost of those tickets does not even approach 100 million euros. Almost every government official concedes that state revenues from afternoon clinics and “ticket sales” are declining, not rising. And regardless of whether patients are themselves paying for their treatments, health care is relatively affordable in Greece. What remains are the illegal payments – the “fakelakia.” Evidently, those who profit off “black money” are in no way daunted by the warnings of trade union bodies – the Federation of Hospital Doctors, for instance – which have launched special campaigns designed to prevent such practices.

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Greek-Australian Leads Diabetes Research

Sofianos Andrikopoulos, Professor of Medicine and member of the Greek Diaspora, was elected president of the Australian Diabetes Society, the leading organization for research, medical education and practice in the field of diabetes in Australia.

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