Patients timed away

Press, 25 June 1983, Page 10

Patients timed away

NZPA Tel Aviv Some Israeli doctors were in intensive care and hospitals were forced to turn away most patients as the doctors’ hunger strike over pay entered its eleventh day yesterday. Talks continued near Tel Aviv to resolve the four-month-old dispute with the Government. The Health Minister, Mr Eliezer Shostak, was considering taking emergency measures as doctors weakened by their fast were fed intravenously, Israel State radio said. Of those in intensive care, one had developed cardiac problems because of the hunger strike, hospital officials said. Nearly half of Israel’s 7000 State-employed doctors are fasting to press for a

100 per cent pay rise for junior colleagues who earn far less than the national average of ?USSOO a month. They also want a 30 per cent rise for senior doctors. Israel Radio said that the talks had focused mainly on differences over overtime pay and the doctors’ demand for a 36-hour working week. The Labour Opposition Leader, Mr Shimon Peres, called for an emergency Knesset (Parliament) session today on the strike, already debated bitterly earlier this week during a defeated no-confidence motion. At Rothschild Hospital, Haifa, overflowing with patients turned away by other area hospitals, the acting director, Dr Arieh

Safrir, described the situation as catastrophic. “We are continuing to accept patients, but the doctors are no longer strong enough to take care of them,” he said. At Soroka Hospital, which serves 300,000 people in south Israel, only two doctors worked in the maternity ward yesterday, forcing most women to go more than 100 km to give birth at other hospitals. Residents in north Israel demonstrated against the doctors in the Galilean town of Tiberias, calling the strike immoral. The Treasury has refused the doctors’ demands, fearing that it will fuel other labour unrest and increase inflation, already at 140 per cent.