[D66] Fwd: [Marxism] "Hunger has returned to Greece"

[Antid Oto]

Ordinary Greeks turning to NGOs as health system hit by austerity
06.10.11 @ 09:28
By Leigh Phillips
http://euobserver.com/851/113841

[..]

The head of Medecins du Monde in the country, dentist Nikitis Kanakis,
offers an equally grim portrait of the state of health-care in
austerity-ruled Greece.

“The situation in the last year has taken a turn for the worse,” he
says. Of the 30,000 patients the group has attended to in the last year,
some 35 percent are Greek citizens, up from 10 percent in 2010. Some
nine percent of this figure are children.

“There has been a tremendous change for the worse in a very short period
of time.”

He says people come to MDM clinics with prescriptions for which they
cannot pay and that some hospitals “run out from time to time of even
basic materials.”

Hunger has returned to Greece, he says. Visitors to their clinics are
now not just asking for medical assistance and medicines, but food as well.

“Amongst some children and the elderly, signs of mild malnutrition have
begun to appear. This is mostly amongst migrants, but Greek citizens as
well. There is a problem also not just with the amount but the quality
of the food.”

[..]