“We are living the days of the collapse of the National Social Security System”, said the president of SYRIZA-PS, Alexis Tsipras, speaking to his employees People’s Hospitalwhich he visited this morning.

Alexis Tsipras, after taking a tour of the outpatient clinics, addressed the doctors and nurses of the institution, speaking of a “third-world image” in all the country’s public hospitals that “does not deserve us”.

Referring to the two “dramatic incidents” of the last few days with the deaths of the two women, he said that they happened “exactly because of this discrediting, the indifference to the National Health Service”. “Because while there are ambulances, there are no personnel to operate them”, he noted, pointing out that in the last four years “there have been 560 departures of rescuers and no permanent recruitment has been made”.

In addition, he recalled that during the SYRIZA government, even though they were monumental years with restrictions on health spending due to the pressures of the troika, “more than 300 recruitments were made in EKAV”, while “84 ambulances were circulating in Attica compared to 52 today” . He added that in 2018 the Niarchos foundation offered 148 new ambulances.

“Where are these? It is precisely in the breakdowns and in the repair shops that the technical basis of the EKAV has been dissolved”, he noted and accused the failed government of not having public health as a “priority”, referring also to the relevant statements of Adonis Georgiadis, that the priority was the economy. “But how can you build the economy if you don’t have the society standing? How can numbers prosper and people die? This cannot be done,” he emphasized.

Citing other facts, Al. Tsipras pointed out that in December 2019 before the pandemic the staff of the National Health Service was 108,000 and in December 2022, 84,000. “We have lost 35% of the specialized staff. How should the NSS work? Those who came, came with fixed-term contracts,” he said and continued:

“Is social protection our priority?” Human life? If it is our priority, we cannot continue this discrediting”.

“Comparisons in relation to the memorial period prove that it is not a matter of where we will find the money as they tell us. It’s a matter of priorities. Because they didn’t prioritize 700 rescuers in EKAB, but they prioritized hiring 1,000 police officers for the university police, whom they have nothing to do with them,” he emphasized, accusing the previous government of leaving the NSS because it “works for the big interests.”

As he explained, Greece “has the highest percentage of spending on private health of all other EU countries”, i.e. 35% compared to 15%, while the “per capita expenditure on public health is twice as low”, which as he pointed out, it is a “huge field of speculation in the field of health”.

Besides, addressing the workers, he characterized it as a “moral obligation” to all those who were on the front line in the fight against the pandemic to be made permanent, while he committed himself to the “substantial upgrade of the salary scale”, “heavy and unhealthy for the nurses as well” and “increasing the of their earnings”.

“We all understand what is really at stake in the ballot box. Not if we will remain Europe, but if we will finally become Europe, if we will approach the European average, if we will have reliable health services, if we will have a strong and humane social state”, concluded Al. Tsipras.