More than 10,000 service and administrative personnel at the 29 government hospitals throughout the country began an indefinite strike of the hospital system Monday, in what was described by Health Ministry officials as one of the most serious crises in the strike-plagued government health services.
During the past three years the hospitals have been struck by physicians and nurses.
Hardest hit were the country’s eight state owned geriatric and the 10 psychiatric hospitals, which could not function Sunday night, and the 11 general hospitals. Many patients were sent home.
Dr. Moshe Mashiach, in charge of the Health Ministry’s hospital department, said that while food and some laundry services could be contracted for from outside sources, the operation of the hospitals’ electricity, provision of oxygen, sterile laundry services and janitoring services including sanitation, cleaning and garbage collections, could only be provided by in-house hospital staff.
The admission and discharge of patients were also hampered by the absence of clerical staff. Operations were kept to the minimum Monday.
DEMANDS BY THE STAFFS
The hospital staffs are demanding improvements in their pay and conditions — which they say have been promised them repeatedly in recent years but not carried out — to bring the level of their salaries up to that of similar personnel employed in the hospitals of the Histadrut’s Kupat Holim (sick-fund).
The striking workers have threatened to step up their job actions beginning Tuesday — without divulging what their next steps would be.
Meantime, their spokesmen denied statements by Health Ministry spokesmen that patients’ lives were being endangered. They stressed that they had emergency staffs standing by in all hospitals to deal with unforeseen conditions.
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