Coming soon to a UK hospital near you....

[Seth]

Babies held hostage for medical fees, porters as paramedics, £19 out of every £20 cut: A searing despatch from Athens's blood-soaked hospitals that shows why Greece is literally dying to leave the Euro

Greece is beleaguered by crippling EU debt repayments after its bailout
Healthcare system spends half the £13million it spent just five years ago
No beds in hospitals, patients told to bring own sheets, faulty ambulances
Issues so bad that Angela Merkel said to be ready to discuss Greek exit

By Ian Birrell In Athens For The Mail On Sunday

Published: 15:42 EST, 13 June 2015 | Updated: 16:29 EST, 13 June 2015

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How does a nation die? This week, in the beleaguered hospitals of Athens, I saw a glimpse of the shocking answer. It is when its own people die in their thousands simply because the state cannot afford to heal them.

In the Reichstag in Berlin, it is now said openly that Angela Merkel is ready to discuss putting Greece out if its misery – to let it ‘Grexit’ and parachute free of its colossal European debt, which could have a huge impact across the globe.

Yet to pay down this debt, Greeks have been battered by austerity measures that make Labour complaints about Osborne’s cutbacks utterly laughable.
Anger: Workers from Laiko hospital protest against hospital budget cuts.The banner reads: 'GOVERNMENT-IMF-EU-TROIKA is destroying the public health. Free public health for all the people'
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Anger: Workers from Laiko hospital protest against hospital budget cuts.The banner reads: 'GOVERNMENT-IMF-EU-TROIKA is destroying the public health. Free public health for all the people'

There is no greater metaphor for a country’s health than its own healthcare system. And it is only when you see for yourself the horrors convulsing Greece’s NHS that you realise just how insane it is for this once-proud nation to continue as it is. If it was your country, it would make you weep with pain and shame.

In its overloaded hospital wards, I either saw or heard first-hand accounts of babies held hostage for payments and dying patients left unattended; of porters sent out as paramedics, patients told to bring their own sheets, brakes failing on ancient ambulances travelling at high speed and hospitals running out of drugs and dressings.
Long wait: Patients await processing in the emergency unit of the General Hospital of Nikaia in the region of Piraeus

Long wait: Patients await processing in the emergency unit of the General Hospital of Nikaia in the region of Piraeus

Operating theatres have been shut and staff numbers slashed because there simply is no money left. Five years ago, Greece spent £13 billion on the health of its 11 million population – above the European average. It is now spending about half this. Worse still, in the first four months of this year the 140 state hospitals received just £31 million, a 94 per cent fall on the previous year.

And to make matters even blacker, any reserves have just been taken back by the government in its desperate scramble for cash to pay public servants and international debts.

There are claims of an astonishing three-year fall in a Greek person’s life expectancy in just five years since the country’s economy crashed. If confirmed, this would be without precedent in modern Europe.

And the individual human stories are pitiful, verging on the macabre.

I met Costas, a 37-year-old waiter from Corfu, pushing himself slowly along the hospital road. He was struggling with a wheelchair held together with masking tape. His efforts were hampered by having one arm wrapped around a large, unwieldy item in a black bin liner.

He told me that a serious motor-cycle accident had meant the amputation of his right leg. He should still be in the hospital now, he explained, but there were no beds left; he had been asked to leave despite his protests. ‘They just said go home,’ he said. ‘I am scared because I do not have the money to get by.’

As he pushed himself on, I asked what was in the bag. ‘My leg,’ he replied, opening the bin liner to show me his prosthetic limb.
Civil unrest: Protesters shout slogans against the visit of the German finance minister as they demonstrate in central Athens a day after parliament passed unpopular new austerity measures. File picture

Civil unrest: Protesters shout slogans against the visit of the German finance minister as they demonstrate in central Athens a day after parliament passed unpopular new austerity measures. File picture

At several hospitals in the capital, almost every doctor, every nurse, every ambulance driver had horror stories to tell me of a system teetering on the brink of breakdown.

‘This no longer counts as Europe,’ said one surgeon bitterly.

The crisis has become so severe that humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières is preparing an action plan to aid the country if things get worse, similar to its work in the world’s worst conflict zones.

‘The situation is like a war zone without the bullets,’ said one source at the charity. ‘If things keep going the way they are, we could see a totally collapsing health system.’
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The new Left-wing government is bickering over the terms of another bailout – yet for all its posturing has done little to help the health service beyond widening access.

The tragic consequences could be seen visiting Nikaia hospital in the port of Piraeus, as a handful of night-time staff struggled to cope with patients pouring in for emergency care.

One old lady with a deathly countenance lay immobile on a trolley in a corridor, abandoned for the four hours I was there since she appeared to have no family to fight her corner.

Five more elderly people lay on trolleys, two clearly in pain and one in a neck brace, amid a scrum of patients with smashed faces, scraped bodies and fractured limbs being aided by relatives. Police officers escorted a blood-covered prisoner in chains.

The daughter of an 84-year-old woman curled up in agony under a coat told me they had been there for four hours, staff shortages forcing her to wheel her mother to the X-ray unit and for blood tests. ‘Greek hospitals are like hell,’ she told me.
Grave decision: The problems in Greece have become so bad that Angela Merkel is said to be ready to discuss letting Greece exit the Euro which could have worldwide consequences

Grave decision: The problems in Greece have become so bad that Angela Merkel is said to be ready to discuss letting Greece exit the Euro which could have worldwide consequences

Another man escorting his father-in-law, who suffered from Alzheimer’s and had acute stomach pains, said the system was despicable.

‘I feel anger and sadness when I see this,’ he said. He added that his own father had suffered a stroke in Crete and after eight hours the ambulance had not turned up, forcing them to cross the island by taxi at a cost of £108.

One woman held a drip over her mother. Another, left suddenly bereaved, was led out wailing in anguish. Then, as I began chatting to a consultant he was screamed at by a paramedic to treat a badly-battered wife with severe head wounds.
Between a rock and a hard place: Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is facing opposition from his people over crippling austerity measures

Between a rock and a hard place: Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is facing opposition from his people over crippling austerity measures

Panos Papanikolaou, a senior neurosurgeon, said staff shortages due to a four-year state freeze on hiring meant the busy hospital was only using five out of 11 operating theatres. Nurses were in especially short supply, with just 450 remaining – 300 fewer than they need.

Since remaining nurses were owed so much holiday, only three theatres would be in use for the next two months – then none except for extreme emergencies in August, a peak month for tourism.

‘The decision to stop all hirings of medical staff was a criminal action in my view,’ said Papanikolaou.

‘Intensive care doctors estimate we lose 2,000 people a year that should not be dying.’

Nurses told me there were no sheets so patients had to bring their own; at night, they placed nappies and light mattresses on top if patients bled or wet the bed since there were no replacements.

In one ward, they clubbed together to buy a blood pressure monitor and thermometers due to equipment shortages. Since pay has been cut by one third as pressures surge, such actions highlight the heroism of some medical staff struggling to keep the system afloat.

I found Panayota Conti, 35, working as sole night nurse on duty for 20 patients in the urology surgical ward, nine of whom had had serious operations that day.

‘Often there is more than one person in distress and I have to choose who to help,’ she said. ‘The patients understand but they are getting less good care than before.’

Or as another nurse put it: ‘If two people are dying, only one can get help – it is that bad.’

When I asked what it was like to work under such conditions, Conti said she felt like jumping out of the window at times, adding: ‘The only way to survive is if you love your job.’ She knew of seven colleagues at her hospital – two doctors and five nurses – left so dejected they went to work in England. A cardiac surgeon told me 59 Greek heart specialists had moved to the UK’s NHS.
Negotiations: Greece's prime minister Alexis Tsipras, right, was hoping to meet with the leaders of Germany and France in Brussels Wednesday, in the latest effort to break a bailout negotiation deadlock that has revived fears his country could default and drop out of the Euro

Negotiations: Greece's prime minister Alexis Tsipras, right, was hoping to meet with the leaders of Germany and France in Brussels Wednesday, in the latest effort to break a bailout negotiation deadlock that has revived fears his country could default and drop out of the Euro

Later, I talked to an ambulance driver who told me of a recent incident in which the brakes on his 11-year-old vehicle had failed as he rushed a car crash victim to the hospital. He only avoided another collision by destroying the gearbox. ‘We often have crashes with these vehicles,’ he added. ‘But if you arrive by ambulance, at least you get priority treatment.’

There have been recent cases of hospitals running out of petrol for their ambulances – and even painkillers for patients. At another unit, one driver confessed he was a porter given 15 days’ training and then sent out as a paramedic dealing with the most severe incidents. ‘It’s crazy,’ he said. ‘We do not have the right training.’

Among the worst hit are cancer patients, who can wait four months for diagnosis and then six months for key treatments. Union representatives at Agios Savvas in Athens, Greece’s biggest oncology centre, said staffing levels had fallen to almost half the numbers needed.

‘If you have a six-month wait to start radiotherapy there’s no point coming – either you die or the cancer is so advanced it is pointless,’ said Petros Athanasiades, a radiographer.

After seeing one patient nearly die because he lost his job and consequent right to treatment, cardiologist George Vichas set up a free community clinic staffed by volunteers, with 39 similar set-ups across the country.

The consultant said they had even come across five cases at a maternity hospital where new-born babies were held hostage until their parents paid for their treatment. ‘We have seen an absolute collapse of the state health system,’ he said.

How did it ever come to this? And what does it means for the nation’s future in the eurozone – and the eurozone as a whole? Before the crash, Greece’s health service was inefficient, badly managed and corrupt like the rest of the public sector – yet it provided well-trained staff and one of the world’s most comprehensive healthcare systems.
Austerity: There have been a long line of anti-auserity marches in Greece since the country took a loan from Europe that came with various provisos forcing Greece to impose a harsh programme of cuts

Austerity: There have been a long line of anti-auserity marches in Greece since the country took a loan from Europe that came with various provisos forcing Greece to impose a harsh programme of cuts

But after the crisis struck and the country was ordered by international lenders to cut costs, new benefit rules and rising unemployment saw the number of Greeks without health cover soar from 500,000 to 2.5 million people.

The surging poverty and deteriorating medical care led to an increase in problems, from diabetes to depression, drug addiction, heart problems, HIV and tuberculosis. Both infant mortality and suicides are also reported to have risen sharply.

At the same time, patients migrated from the private to the public sector, adding to the state’s burden, while often they delayed seeking treatment allowing conditions to worsen because of the cost of drugs and doctors – many of whom demand under-the-counter payments.

The EU and the eurozone were projects designed to bring countries closer together. Instead, they have sparked poverty, decay and division.

Yet still the euro-zealots demand further austerity, while the latest set of Greek politicians seem as incapable of resolving the crisis as their hapless predecessors. The country and its blighted people are trapped between many more years of this slow stagnation or the sharp pain of euro exit. No wonder the latter increasingly seems a better bet.

It’s easy to see why a default on part – or even all – of its €320 billion debt is dreaded in Europe: It could trigger a domino effect, starting in Spain and Portugal, which could ultimately end the euro dream.

It would plunge Greece into crisis. But without debt repayments, the country runs a surplus. Outside of the euro, it would at least attract huge inward investment, its exports would soar and it could rebuild.

And it could do the one thing that is the modern definition of a nation: it could begin to cure its own people of their ills.

Ultimately, what could be the rebirth of Greece may be the death of the original European dream.

[JimC]

A rather big stretch, from chaotic Greece to comfortable UK...

[PsychoSerenity]

A rather big stretch, from chaotic Greece to comfortable UK...

No, he's right. If the Tories continue with their economically illiterate anti-social austerity policies, we'll be failing to pay for healthcare too.

[mistermack]

What the right-wingers like to ignore, is that Greece is in trouble because they went banking mad, just like Cyprus and Iceland.

They all got sucked in to the huge US con, of parceling up shite housing debt and selling it as good.
It was failed US regulation of capitalism that sank Greece, and most of the others that got into trouble.
For a while, countries like Greece and banks around the world got the impression that making money was easy, till the rug was pulled away from under them.

[Hermit]

What the right-wingers like to ignore, is that Greece is in trouble because they went banking mad...

...and Greek right wing governments borrowing money from right wing financial institutions eager to make a buck to cover their budget commitments. Now the lenders are facing the prospect of a multi-billion haircut and the common people of Greece austerity measures. Well done, right-wingers. I hope there'll be total repudiation of all debts by the current government and a grexit.

[Seth]

What the right-wingers like to ignore, is that Greece is in trouble because they went banking mad...

...and Greek right wing governments borrowing money from right wing financial institutions eager to make a buck to cover their budget commitments. Now the lenders are facing the prospect of a multi-billion haircut and the common people of Greece austerity measures. Well done, right-wingers. I hope there'll be total repudiation of all debts by the current government and a grexit.

And of course Greece's notorious socialist public employee featherbedding and generous pensions, not to mention it's incredibly ineffective and flatly insane central planning (like the Olympics), along with it's notorious socialist governmental corruption, tax schemes and bureaucracy had absolutely nothing whatever to do with the creation of an entire underground economy and the economic collapse of the nation.

[Hermit]

...it's notorious socialist governmental corruption... blah blah blah

Until five months ago Greece had several years of right-wing corruption and featherbedding of free enterprise. As usual you keep posting from your very own fact-free zone.

[Seth]

...it's notorious socialist governmental corruption... blah blah blah

Until five months ago Greece had several years of right-wing corruption and featherbedding of free enterprise. As usual you keep posting from your very own fact-free zone.

Um, several years of conservative government desperately trying to reverse 75 years of socialist rule, which is what got Greece into trouble in the first place. The conservative government did everything it could to stop the economic bloodletting and got Marxists rioting in the streets for their trouble, Marxists who didn't want an end to socialist corruption. The hard-core nature of the Greek Marxist movement is demonstrated by the current Marxist government, which is simply refusing the austerity measures necessary to prevent not only default on its national debt but ejection from the EU. The Marxists in charge think the rest of the planet should just forget about Greece's debts, evidently because to the socialists of Greece think it's not fair that they should have to pay for their socialist malfeasance.

Greece is about to get democracy, good and hard, and it will be an object lesson to everyone else where socialism ultimately and inevitably leads, to economic collapse, social disorder, hunger, starvation and death, which is exactly what's happening in that other socialist utopia, Venezuela.

RIP Greece.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Um, several years of conservative government desperately trying to reverse 75 years of socialist rule,

Errr... the last 75 years includes: occupation by the Nazis, a right-wing military junta and several periods of government by the centrist-right Nea Demokratia party. But, hey, what do facts have to do with anything, eh?

[JimC]

Um, several years of conservative government desperately trying to reverse 75 years of socialist rule,

Errr... the last 75 years includes: occupation by the Nazis, a right-wing military junta and several periods of government by the centrist-right Nea Demokratia party. But, hey, what do facts have to do with anything, eh?

In the case of Greece, I suspect that government inefficiency and corruption levels have been fairly independent of the purported political leanings of any particular government of the day.

[Hermit]

...75 years of socialist rule

Let's have a look at that assertion, shall we?

75 years ago Greece was a monarchy and its government leader was the fascist Metaxas until he died in 1941. Then the Italians tried to conquer it and failed. By May 1941 the Germans showed the Itis how to conquer the country but were driven out four years later. A monarchist government ruled until civil war broke out two years later. That war lasted for three years. The right wingers won, the communist leader was executed by firing squad and the militant anti communist, Field Marshall Alexander Papagos became Prime Minister, an office he held until he died in 1955. Despite increasing dissatisfaction and dissent the right clung to power until it looked like finally collapsing in 1967. That's when the right wing Colonels took over with a coup d'état, and they remained in control until 1974. Political parties were dissolved and several thousand suspected communist sympathisers were imprisoned or exiled.

In 1974 the Colonels finally lost the plot by taking Cyprus from Turkey. They lost the support of the rest of the military, elections were called and the monarchy was abolished by referendum. The two main contenders for government were New Democracy (ND), the centre-right party and the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). ND won by a wide margin and remained in power until 1981.

Between 1981 and 2009 neither party could maintain a parliamentary majority for any appreciable length of tome, but ND was prevailed more often and for longer spans than PASOK. The governmental system became so unstable that ND and PASOK agreed to govern together as a grand coalition, pledging their parliamentary support for a government of national unity headed by former European Central Bank vice-president Lucas Papademos in 2009. That was also the year in which the Greek debt crisis came to a head, culminating with the socialist coalition Syriza winning government in February this year and finishing up holding the baby.

[JimC]

[Xamonas Chegwé]

It's lovely when Seth is this wrong, isn't it?

[JimC]

I'm sure he's going to say that they were right wing on the surface, but underneath, the dreaded socialism was rotting their innards...

[Hermit]

It's lovely when Seth is this wrong, isn't it?

Not really. I find wrongness borne of boundless arrogance and misplaced self assuredness in combination with massive ignorance and overwhelming prejudice really depressing rather than lovely.

As if that were not enough, I agree with Jim's prognosis that Seth will attempt to worm his way out of having been shown to be wrong yet again. At best he'll concede that he may not have been factually completely right and immediately follow that up by saying something like "but my point still stands".