After more than a month of protests, on July 2 staff at Sofia’s Pirogov emergency health care centre called off a threatened strike. In the closing hours of the day, the medics’ strike committee reached an agreement with Health Minister Radoslav Gaidarski on increased financing for Pirogov and replacement of the incumbent management and the director of Pirogov, Spas Spaskov. On July 3, Gaidarski accepted Spaskov’s resignation.
Gaidarski pledged to launch a search for new director and to appoint new executive board in about a week. The strike committee has already proposed five doctors to Gaidarski for membership of the new board.
As for the financial demands, Gaidarski will distribute additional financing for the renovation of Pirogov’s building and purchase of new medical equipment. An allocation will be made to furnish five operation theatres and for the purchase of a new scanner. Resources were found to refresh the facade of the hospital. The sensitive issue of salary increases was postponed. Initially the medics demanded salaries of 1600 leva for doctors, 800 leva for nurses and 400 leva for paramedics.
The ministry and the medics will continue negotiations on the issue which will include the introduction of a new system of subsidies for expensive medical treatments. This was Pirogov medics’ biggest concern because, they said, Pirogov used the most difficult and expensive medical treatments in the whole country and the state subsidies were not enough to match the hospital’s expenses.
Although the strike has been called off, the medics said they would remain on strike alert if no agreement was reached on increasing salaries.
The first protest of Pirogov staff happened spontaneously on May 30 when the medics blocked the road outside the hospital on Pencho Slaveikov Boulevard. Since then, the medics have been holding protests every week, the culmination of which was a July 1 concert outside Ivan Vazov National Theatre. The medics received huge public support for their demands, because Pirogov has a special place in Bulgaria’s health system. Medics from other cities such as Varna, Bourgas, Plovdiv, Pleven and Blagoevgrad also stated their support for Pirogov, which was an acknowledgement for the work Pirogov does, which in most of the cases means taking care of every difficult case in the country which other hospitals have given up on. At first Gaidarski was unresponsive to the medics’ demands, but public and media pressure proved as the main reason for the “lucky” for Gaidarski outcome. After July 2, it seemed that both sides had made compromises – Gaidarski promised to dismiss the management board, and the medics have promised not to go on strike, depending on further negotiations on salary increases.
However, the medics may have something to be concerned about following the example of the drivers from the City Transport company. In May they threatened strike action and received a 200 leva increase in their salaries as of June 1. However there are allegations from the drivers trade union that there seems to be a delay with the money that was promised to them by Sofia municipality.
