On Thursday, negotiations between resident doctors and the government ended in a fiasco. Representatives of the protesting residents had hoped for a meeting with the Prime Minister, but Beata Szydło did not come. “The hunger strike will be resumed,” they declared during a press conference.
On Thursday evening, the protesters suspended their hunger strike and sent a delegation for talks at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister. The meeting was attended by Minister of Health Konstanty Radziwiłł and Head of the Chancellery, Minister Beata Kempa. However, Prime Minister Beata Szydło failed to turn up, disappointing the protesting doctors.
“Yesterday, during our meeting with the Prime Minister, we heard these words: ‘you suspend your protest, we appoint a team and get down to work.’ We accepted the invitation from the Chancellery of the Prime Minister and came to negotiate. However, the Prime Minister did not come to the meeting,” said Łukasz Jankowski, member of the Committee of Residents of the Doctors’ Trade Union of Poland.
“We only talked with Minister Radziwiłł, Minister Kempa and Minister Kowalczyk, but we were not admitted to the presence of the Prime Minister,” he stressed. “Is this what a dialogue with idealistic young people should be like? Does this look like keeping one’s promises, and is this the way to invite protest leaders to meet with the Prime Minister?” commented Jankowski. “We are humiliated. We will no longer let ourselves be misled and manipulated. We have had faith and trust, but we no longer have faith or trust,” he summed up, adding that it was the protesters who requested the meeting.
“We invite residents to join the team working on health care issues, provided their protest is brought to an end,” declared head of the Chancellery, Minister Beata Kempa after meeting the residents’ representatives. Kempa noted that the team was expected to have its proposals ready by 15 December.
“If the residents definitively end their protest and return to their patients, the Prime Minister is ready to talk, but before this happens, the situation must be clearly evaluated and diagnosed by the team, who must propose solutions,” Minister Kempa told reporters. “Since these conditions have not been met, the Prime Minister could hardly be expected to come to the meeting. The more so that she already met the protesters yesterday, clearly showing her readiness to negotiate,” Kempa stressed.
“Patients are the central and most important concern of health care”
Minister of Health Konstanty Radziwiłł emphasized that “the government is working on several issues of concern and interest to residents.”
“However, since patients are the central and most important concern of health care, the Minister of Health will appoint a team in the next few days, on Monday at the latest, to begin the work in any case,” he said. He noted that the team will be dealing with the issue of increasing health care spending – including the salaries of health care workers, residents among them – as quickly as possible. “Let me point out that work in this area is already under way, and that salary increases have begun for all employees and residents, who will definitely receive better pay in any case. It is planned that over the next 4 years, the residents’ pay will be increased at least by PLN 2,000 per month. However, we want to continue negotiations over this issue,” said Radziwiłł.
“We also intend to hold talks, deliberate, discuss and analyze the future system of postgraduate education, particularly the specialization of doctors. Various options are being considered in the context of these protests, including the abolition of the position of a resident doctor. Other solutions are also being considered to ensure that a doctor whose professional career has been financed in one way or another repays this debt, funded by all of us, with his or her work,” said the Minister. He also noted that while the outcome of this work was not predetermined, “the team will get down to it with the residents or without them.”
“Of course, the invitation is still on the table, they are welcome to join the talks over these matters and become active participants, not merely observers of the events, but active participants and co-decision-makers,” he declared. Minister Henryk Kowalczyk said the government was determined to increase health care spending to 6 percent of the GDP. “We will move forward. I do hope the residents will join the team and will make an active and positive contribution,” he said. He said that the Standing Committee of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister may soon take up the issue of legislation to increase health care spending to 6 percent of the GDP. He said that the bill was already being drafted and calculations were being made to estimate how long it would take to implement it, since it appeared that it might be sooner than currently planned, that is, by 2025.
Hunger strike
Earlier, the hunger striking residents left a letter for Prime Minister Beata Szydło at the Chancellery, refusing to be part of in the common team, which would review the protesters’ demands by 15 December and propose solutions for the health care system. About 20 resident doctors have been on hunger strike in the main hall of the Children’s Hospital in Warsaw since 2 October. On Wednesday morning, they suspended their protest for the first time, for the duration of talks with the Prime Minister, who offered to form a common team.
Health care workers are currently demanding an increase in health care spending to 6.8 percent of the GDP over the next three years, and eventually to 9 percent over the next ten years. Doctors also want bureaucracy to be reduced, queues to be shortened, the number of medical workers to be increased, working conditions improved and salaries raised.
Źródło: tvn24.pl