The Social Clinic of Solidarity in Thessaloniki condemns the continued brutal Health Policies of the coalition government. In particular, we note an insistence on the criminal blockade from free health care services for all our fellow citizens that have no insurance or access to any type of social security benefits. This blockade it is clearly criminal given that the luck of accessibility to primary health services and to hospitals have already resulted to deaths and permanent disabilities to thousands of people since they are unable to cope with the cost of care, and thus either they did not receive it at all or arrived too late for treatment and their health problem has deteriorated dramatically.

The SCS denounces the closure of eight hospitals in Athens and Thessaloniki, and the already planned abolition of even more hospital sections and beds in the province, resulting from the obligation of the Ministry of Health to comply with the memorandum commitments. We also denounce the availability - mobility - dismissals of thousands of health workers, while the massive recruitment of all levels are more necessary than ever. Those hospitals that are closing regardless to their many functional weaknesses, precisely due to the lack of personnel and main departments, met the needs of public health care and their repeal is a major hit for Public Health. Especially in Thessaloniki, the Hospital of Infectious Diseases and Dermatology Hospital were unique cases, scientifically speaking, and beside the loss of public beds, their closure will cause a huge gap in the field of medical expertise. Moreover, Hospital “Panagia” contributes to the duty program of Accident and Emergency Departments of the city steadily every fourth day with the Hippocratic General Hospital all these years, providing very significant services to residents of eastern Thessaloniki. But we would like to emphasize once again that the greatest problem today remains that more than the 30% of the population is without insurance combined with the abolition of the public hospitals during the last three years. Thus, in order for the uninsured (i.e. the unemployed, the poor, undocumented immigrants, the small traders who cannot pay the 450euros per month for their insurance, all those workers of that gray zone of black and uninsured labor) to be hospitalized, they must pay the entire cost of hospitalization and the whole cost of medication, which in the vast majority of cases adds up to hundreds and thousands of Euros. The exclusion of the uninsured, the increasing participation by the insured patients in the cost of healthcare, the closure of hospitals and the removing of hospital parts and accessories (that is defiantly baptized " character change "), availability - dismissals of workers in health and the functional collapse of the remaining hospitals due to underfunding and suspension of recruitment, is a single policy under the memorandum commitment by the government aiming to abolish the right to health as free and inalienable. For the extreme neoliberal power bloc Government – Troika, health is a manageable commodity, and as such, it should fully be taken by the private sector regardless the tragic results already in the life and physical integrity of thousands of our fellow citizens.

The provocative positioning of the leadership of the Ministry of Health by Adonis Georgiadis, known for his fascist and extreme right positions and the deficit for severity, fits perfect to the project called hastily to complete. This is the final stage of a murderous policy for the Public and Free Health Care system and consists a bland official institutional racism that began since Andreas Loverdos days (import payment by the uninsured, establish hospital entrance ticket, shaming and imprisonment of HIV positive women patients, huge increase of hospitalization costs, slandering immigrants for any insufficiency of the NHS etc).

The obligation and the need of all of us who are victims of this policy, is to fight united and to be determined to overturn these policies as soon as possible and impose again the public health care as primary and non-negotiable right and good, which will be offered free and universally regardless of economic and employment status, legal documents, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, gender and age. Today, any negligence and diffidence in making solidarity initiatives, any corporatist approach or social automation, any argument about disruptive practices and devaluation of lives lost every day, facilitates this criminal policy and the establishment of this barbarism, where human life worth less than a price ticket.

The Social Clinic of Solidarity, that through its daily operation is trying to keep alive the concept of free health care, supports the victims of this policy and denounces the exclusion of uninsured patients, the demolition and commercialization of NHS the last two years, calls for a sustained and united struggle in order to exist again a free and public health and welfare system for all residents of this territory without exclusions.