The entire medical community would launch a national protest in May, Bulgarian Medical Association (BMA) chair Andrei Kehaiov said on March 12 2008, as quoted by Dnevnik daily.

Authorities did not pursue any dialog with the medical personnel on the serious problems in healthcare sector, implicitly threatening the lives of the Bulgarian citizens, he said.

The medics had demanded meetings with President Georgi Purvanov and Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, “but they [didn’t] want to hear” them, Dnevnik daily quoted Kehaiov as saying.
BMA planned to inform all medical structures in the EU on the crisis, which they claimed was getting increasingly serious.

Stanka Markova, president Bulgarian Association of Health Care Professionals in Nursing, warned that the nurses in kindergartens were ready to resign en masse because of their low salaries. We will wait for the branch agreement and if it does not satisfy us, we will move to the private sector, where the salaries start from 600 leva, Markova said.

According to Dnevnik, the professional organisations of medics, nurses and pharmacists had sent a letter to Health Minister Radoslav Gaidarski, demanding Gaidarski to announce the gross salaries of the people working in the system within 10 days. If their demands were not met, after the protest the medical community would go on effective strike.

The medical staff would try to attract the drivers and hospital attendants, who worked for health-care institutions, to support them. Patients organisations would also join the protests, Kehaiov said.

BMA is also unsatisfied with the reform ideas of the authorities and demanded a referendum on the issue. The medics feared that there was an attempt public means to be re-directed to private health-care funds under unclear conditions and criteria. According to BMA, private health insurance accounts, which could be inherited, should be implemented.

Medics and pharmacists demanded the authorities also to draft a long-term policy on health care and drugs instead of “cheap populist moves” like abolishment of consumer fees, going as far as to suggested that a new fee should be introduced, to be paid by pharmacy customers.