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French surgeons threaten to leave to protest working conditions
More than 3,000 militant French surgeons are threatening to down scalpels and cross the English Channel to Britain for a week of symbolic exile next month in protest over rates of pay and high insurance premiums. "We are going abroad because nobody will be able to force us to work when we are there," one surgeon, Philippe Breil, said. French law would oblige them to work if asked to do so by their local authority. The surgeons are planning their protest for the week beginning 30 August and say they will meet up at a conference centre in Wembley. With more than half France's 6,000 surgeons out of the country, only emergency operations could be practised during their protest, organisers say. On a campaign website, a urologist, Gerard Maudrux, appealed to fellow surgeons to join the protest. "If you don't do it for yourselves, do it for surgery itself, for your patients, so that tomorrow they are operated on by real surgeons who have the time and financial means and equipment to carry out surgery worthy of its name," he said. The surgeons are angry that patients' fees have not increased for 15 years, but their insurance premiums have increased tenfold over the period. They are also concerned about the future of their profession. Many French surgeons are nearing retirement in the next few years, their average age is 55, and poor pay means fewer medical students are choosing to specialise in surgery. "Doing nothing today is irresponsible. Being responsible today is to warn that the situation is serious: tomorrow we won't have any more surgeons," said Dr Philippe Cuq, on behalf of a French surgeons' association. The protest increases pressure on the conservative government of the prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, which is trying to reform France's indebted health-care system by cutting costs. Ah, don't you love socialized medicine? Seems to be taking the same disasterous nose dive in Canada, UK, Fraaance. This "terror" folks is coming to your neighborhood soon, if Kerry/Edwards/Hildabeast have their way. Posted by: rex 2004-07-30 |
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