Hospital doctors, nurses on strike over ‘inhumane conditions’

Doctors and nurses working at Greece's public hospitals were on strike on Thursday and their unions held a protest march from the Health Ministry to Parliament in central Athens in demand of more staff hirings and better salaries.

Decrying the "inhumane conditions" at the country's public hospitals for both patients and staff, the unions also lamented that overworked healthcare professionals are not being properly compensated for keeping the system propped up.

"Hospital doctors and healthcare workers have faced 15 years of frozen wages, precarious working conditions and an inhumane working conditions, with endless and worsening on-call shifts, while patients have been consigned to stretchers for the past 15 years, facing endless waiting lists and having to make relentless payments," the ONGE union, representing hospital doctors, said in an announcement.