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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
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'
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.
