​Idyllic Greek islands are crowded with tourists, including Romanians, who value the Hellenic Republic over Romania in every way, but the country, Politico.eu reports, faces a deficient medical system and a shortage of doctors, prompting a warning: “don’t get sick here.” The analysis comes in the context of a Romanian woman holidaying in Halkidiki this summer who died after an ambulance arrived to give her first aid just 75 minutes later.

Although the Greek islands are crowded with tourists, Politico notes that several people, including a pregnant woman and her unborn child, have died while waiting for an ambulance.

The deaths of a pregnant teenager and her unborn child are just two of at least nine deaths that could have been prevented in Greece this summer if the country had not faced a chronic shortage of ambulances and medical personnel just before the devastating disaster struck. Forest fire.

“Ambulance service needs to be redesigned from scratch”

Some hospitals on the islands do not have permanent GPs and rely entirely on a short-term cover cycle, supplemented by staff from mainland Greece brought in by financial incentives. Emergency services are in an even worse condition.

Many of the Cyclades and Dodecanese islands have only one ambulance operating 24 hours a day. This problem is observed not only on the islands – in Athens there are about 50 ambulances instead of the 85-90 needed.

“We need to redesign the ambulance service from the ground up because there are huge gaps across the country,” Giorgos Mathiopoulos, president of the Hellenic Ambulance Service (EKAV), told Politico.

Most medical centers on the small Aegean islands are struggling to cope, as a limited number of doctors have to be on call every day.

But even where the state decides to hire more doctors, staff refuse to move to the islands, where the cost of living has become unbearable due to increased tourism. This increases the pressure on the EKAV.

“We have sent more health workers from the rest of the country to the islands to meet the needs of the season. Our colleagues have to cut short their summer holidays to do this, but these are obviously only temporary solutions,” Mathiopoulos said.

A Romanian woman is among the victims of the medical system in Greece

In June, a 63-year-old Kos woman died in a pickup truck while being transported to a local hospital after an accident because the island’s only ambulance was busy responding to another emergency.

11 people need to work for an ambulance 24/7. Kos, an island of 40,000 permanent residents that welcomes more than 1 million tourists during the summer, has three new ambulances, but only one can operate because it has only 10 paramedics, two of whom will retire next year.

A few days after this incident, a 19-year-old eight-month pregnant woman died in the suburbs of Athens, who waited for an ambulance for more than five hours and made about 20 calls. Her unborn child also died.

Since then, there have been at least six deaths across the country due to the lack of medical transport.

A 78-year-old woman fainted while swimming on the island of Lesbos. Paramedics arrived on the scene two hours later, only to find that the heart had stopped beating.

We also remind you that in June, a 63-year-old woman from Romania died on Wednesday on the Halkidiki peninsula after an ambulance arrived to give her first aid only 75 minutes later.

In the case of the tourist from Romania, although the ambulance left immediately after the call, help arrived too late, only an hour and 15 minutes later.

Firefighters and military instead of medical personnel

In response to mounting criticism following these potentially preventable deaths, the government has mobilized firefighters, soldiers and drivers to help local authorities in understaffed tourist areas. EKAV and doctors are against such a decision, calling it an “unscientific search for quick solutions.”

They argue that the use of untrained personnel in emergency situations can prove dangerous for patients who need treatment at the scene.

The Greek parliament passed an amendment on the emergency deployment of firefighters and military personnel on July 27, as firefighters battled serious fires that even spread to a military depot.

• “This is the Greece of the reformers [premier Kyriakos] Mitsotakis? Is this Greece 2.0? You borrow firefighters, soldiers and other personnel and place them in EKAV, where there are no medical personnel or drivers. Is this an update?” said the head of the parliamentary group of the main opposition party “Syriza” Sokratis Famellos.

The government says the move is not a long-term solution to staff shortages, but to save lives during the busy tourist season.

The Prime Minister was re-elected on the promise of reforming the health care system

Conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was re-elected on June 25 after pledging to make reforming the national health care system a priority. He promised to hire about 10,000 medical workers, including 800 ambulance drivers and 250 motorcycle paramedics.

But the Confederation of Public Hospital Employees (POEDYN) says those hires only cover recent retirements and are not enough to improve the system’s quality. POEDYN says around 10,000 health workers have left the public sector in the past two and a half years, and another 5,000 are expected to leave in 2023.

Opposition parties have sharply criticized the government for leaving public hospitals in worse shape than before the pandemic, saying the main goal is to privatize health services, which the government denies.

Protest of a doctor who worked for 28 days in a row

But the problem is more complicated than the lack of funding – few doctors or emergency workers want to work on the islands.

The only two general practitioners at the Kos hospital resigned in 2021. The hospital is now relying on temporary staff while it tries to replace them, but so far no one has applied for the job. This also applies to pediatricians and radiologists.

But no matter how ideal and dreamy life on the island may seem to visitors, this way of life is unattainable for medical personnel. Islanders prefer a short-term tourist rental to a permanent — but cheaper — rental with a doctor or nurse.

At the end of June, the only cardiologist at the Kosovo hospital held a rally in the hospital yard, holding a banner that read: “I’ve exhausted my options, I need help.” He worked for 28 days in a row and was the only doctor at the island’s cardiac dispensary since May.

Burnout is one of the main reasons cited in a growing list of doctor layoffs on the islands. The Federation of Hospital Doctors’ Associations (OENGE) said it was “now developing into an operational collapse of many hospitals in the region, as well as hospital wards in major cities”.

Greece, which is preferred by Romanians for a long vacation

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in May 2022 the Greek border authorities estimated that the number of tourists from Romania expected in this summer season would be approximately 1,400,000 Romanian citizens.

According to Viewing Destinations Research, launched in April 2023 by Destination of the Year and the Institute for Visionary Cities (IOV) and conducted by market research agency AHA Moments, Bulgaria was the most popular destination for a mini-break abroad, followed by Spain, while the first place for long vacations was taken by Greece, followed by Bulgaria and Italy, reports Agerpres.

According to the coastal research, Romania is chosen by half of the respondents, followed by Greece and Bulgaria.

“Greece is winning the battle for image by a lot, including the degree of recommendation. Those who have been there in the last 5 years rate Greece over Romania in every department except the ease with which you can get there. The biggest differences with Romania are in the sections cleanliness and reasonable price (+30%), followed by beaches and quality of service (+25%). Compared to Bulgaria, the Romanian coast seems to have a better chance of defending its market share: a better idea of safety, about food or opportunities to have fun with family. Instead, it is necessary to improve the perception of the level of cleanliness and quality of services”, – showed the study “Destination Destinations Research”.