Israeli healthcare workers launched a nationwide strike Monday morning to protest a recent string of violent attacks on hospital staff.

• The Israel Medical Association (IMA) announced Sunday that from 7:00 a.m. Monday until 7:00 a.m. Tuesday, medical services will be scaled back across the country, with only emergency services and a limited number of long-term care services offered.
• During the day-long strike, hospitals and other healthcare centers will operate largely in accordance with the typical Sabbath work-schedule, handling primarily emergency cases.
• In addition to emergency rooms, intensive care units, and delivery rooms, hospitals will continue to operate their oncology, hematology, obstetrics, dialysis, and in vitro fertilization departments.

Talks broke down Sunday following a failed attempt by Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman Tov to avert the strike.

In a letter to IMA chief Prof. Zion Hagay, Bar Siman Tov urged medical workers to find an alternative outlet for their protest.

• “We do not disagree about the need to protest, but the planned steps for a shutdown will harm the patients and their daily routines.”

Hagay rejected Bar Siman Tov’s overture, threatening to expand the sanctions if the IMA’s demands are not met.

• “Tomorrow we will have a warning strike for only 24 hours. We’ve had enough promises. We demand uncompromising security for the doctors of Israel. If our demands to improve the security for medical teams in hospitals and communities are not met within a reasonable time, we will exacerbate our sanctions.”

Last week, doctors at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba held a three-hour strike.

• “We made it clear in advance that our sanctions at Soroka were only a warning strike, but today it is clear that we have no choice but to seriously consider shutting down the entire health system so that someone in the government will wake up and put an end to this lawlessness,” Hagay said after last week’s strike.

The initial strike was undertaken after a pediatrician was attacked by the patients of a young child who was brought to Soroka for treatment.

Source: Arutz Sheva

Header: Doctors and nurses strike outside the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem on August 2