Waves of revulsion swept over family-oriented Greek society as people listened to the news on 5 December 2011. Public hospitals in Athens and three other cities were turning away pregnant women ready to give birth, if they couldn’t afford to pay for their hospitalization on the spot. Childbirth, it seemed, had become a privilege for the rich. Under tremendous public pressure, the government finally relented: by letting the women pay for the medical expenses later!
If a society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members, Greece’s moral height is diminishing as the financial crisis escalates. ‘The number of unvaccinated children is reaching a dangerous threshold,’ says George Nikolaidis, a psychiatrist from the public Institute of Child Health. Among working adults, one in four employees doesn’t have health coverage, while a growing mass of freelancers and small traders cannot pay their insurance contributions. All these people are excluded from healthcare and must turn to NGOs and charities for survival. According to Nikitas Kanakis of Médecins du Monde, ‘Our free polyclinics were created to treat immigrants, but during the last two years the number of Greeks [seeking treatment] has quadrupled. In the past they represented 9-10 per cent of our patients, now they are over 40 per cent.’
