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Murcia health services face collapse as doctors' strike goes ahead
Minimum services have been guaranteed in Region of Murcia emergency departments, the flu still threatens to overwhelm hospitals
Doctors in the Region of Murcia, along with the rest of Spain, are moving ahead with their planned strike action this week despite the fact that the country is trying to cope with a flu outbreak that has already reached epidemic levels.
The industrial action will impact health centres and hospitals across the Region from Tuesday December 9 to Friday December 12 – one of the busiest times for the local health services in the run up to Christmas.
But hospitals are dealing with another key factor at the moment: the early arrival of the seasonal flu epidemic, which has escalated so much in recent days that the Region of Murcia is reintroducing mandatory mask-wearing from this Tuesday, coinciding with the start of the strike action.
Flu infections have skyrocketed by 110% in the last week alone and hospitalisations are also on the rise. At the Reina Sofía Hospital, the number of patients admitted with the flu jumped from 7 last Monday to 17 on Friday December 5.
The regional government has guaranteed minimum services to keep emergency rooms ticking over, but Primary Care is also involved in the strikes, and this is expected to put a real strain on the entire system this week. Patients who would normally go to their local medical centres will likely find them closed and be forced to the hospitals instead.
To try and mitigate against this, for the duration of the industrial action, in primary care centres with a staff of 10 or more doctors, minimum services include three family doctors on duty in the morning and one in the afternoon. Centres with fewer than 10 doctors will have two family doctors on duty in the morning and one in the afternoon.
The strikes in October and June had a significant impact on hospitals: thousands of patients found their appointments cancelled or went home without being able to have their scheduled tests. On October 3, some 3,300 appointments and 1,900 tests were cancelled in hospitals in the Region of Murcia. On June 13, the figures rose to 4,000 hospital appointments, 1,900 tests and 160 surgeries.
Now, the Medical Union is escalating its actions across Spain with a week-long strike just before Christmas. Negotiations with the Ministry of Health remain stalled, and doctors reject the reform of the framework statute because it fails to address their main demands.
"On-call shifts are not classified as overtime, nor is their remuneration guaranteed above the regular hourly rate, nor is it ensured that these hours count towards retirement benefits. Furthermore, there is no clear and well-defined timetable for establishing the voluntary nature of these shifts, despite the fact that such voluntariness depends fundamentally on the pay and working conditions involved," the union stated last week.
If 2025 ends with this ongoing conflict with doctors, the Ministry could face an even bigger crisis next year. Most unions, including UGT, CC OO and SATSE, have called for a strike on January 27 for all healthcare workers in protest against the framework statute.
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