Above a dark, tatty arcade of wholesale button traders and empty shop fronts in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, one mother was rocking a sick baby and another was carrying a toddler as they waited to see a volunteer paediatrician in the brightly painted clinic run by the Greek branch of the NGO Doctors of the World.

“We’re already facing a humanitarian crisis in Greece,” said Sofia Garane who runs the clinic. “Of all the damage done during the last five years, healthcare has been hit the worst.”

The Greek healthcare system is in meltdown after years of austerity. State-run hospitals have had to slash budgets but as much as 50% in that time. Basic supplies such as gloves, syringes, gauze, cotton wool, catheters and paper towels have long been in low supply. The numbers of doctors and nurses is critically low.

Rising poverty and rocketing unemployment has left 2.5 million Greeks – a quarter of the population – without national state healthcare coverage (Health benefits are only available for up to a year after losing a job, after which patients must pay for their own treatment). Screening for diseases such as uterus, breast and prostate cancers have been reduced, and with struggling patients unable to seek out primary care, patients are arriving for treatment at late stages when serious conditions have already taken hold.

The local doctors, ranging from urologists and cardiologists to paediatric surgeons, take turns to work for free at the Thessaloniki clinic that is on the frontline of in the medical solidarity movement which is keeping healthcare afloat. Five years ago, most of the patients at this clinic were refugees or other foreign nationals with no access to healthcare. Now, the 1,500 patients who come each month are largely Greeks, many of whom once ran businesses or shops in the city but who are now unemployed and with no healthcare access. Over the past three years, the number of patients arriving to see the clinic’s volunteer psychologist and psychiatrist has doubled.



In the two weeks since Greek banks were frozen and cashpoint withdrawals limited to €60 a day with pensions limited to €120 a week, Garane said more and more people who should have state health coverage had come to the clinic for help.

People wait outside a bank in Athens to receive part of their pensions on Thursday. Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

“Because of the crisis of the past few days, they can’t find their medicines, such as diabetes or blood pressure drugs, or have no money to pay for the percentage of the cost that they have to meet upfront. Stress levels are rising, people are very upset and tense. They now feel afraid. Hope is important and people don’t want to lose their hope for the future,” she said.



Because of the crisis of the past few days, they can’t find their medicines, such as diabetes or blood pressure drugs Sofia Garane

Dr Dimitris Adamidis runs the paediatric department at the general hospital in Xanthi, a north-eastern city in a region with some of the country’s highest poverty rates. He knows firsthand the dangers of budget cuts. In 2011, at the height of the Greek financial crisis, he found a series of problems with the new cheaper umbilical cord clamps that were being used at the hospital, that cost 10 cents each less than the previous ones.

“I researched several problems with them. One newborn had terrible bleeding as a result of it but fortunately we saved him after two weeks in neonatal intensive care.” When Adamidis blew the whistle on the problems, his job was threatened and he was sued by the state, a legal battle which he eventually won this year. “I’m not against cheap materials but they have to be absolutely safe,” he said.

In a country which has seen a rise in diseases such as TB and malaria during the crisis years, children’s health has suffered. In Xanthi, Adamidis sees effects on those whose families sleep rough and has seen a rise in both child obesity, because families eat cheap junk-food, and the chronically underweight because there is little food to go round. Five years ago, there were five paediatricians on his unit. Now there are two.

“There has been a tremendous effort to put the needs of patients first, but now there are signs of burnout in doctors,” he said. “I recently broke my leg and needed to be operated on. My surgeon, who was excellent, started his operating shift at 8am and continued through to 10pm.”

Run-down state hospitals often make work even harder. A Greek lawyer who had recent abdominal surgery, said: “There were three beds in my room but they couldn’t have anyone in the middle bed because the ceiling was falling in over it, and yet the staff were amazing.”

There has been a tremendous effort to put the needs of patients first, but now there are signs of burn​out in doctors Dr Dimitris Adamidis

When he was elected in January, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, promised to hire 4,500 healthcare workers and fight what he called the “barbaric conditions” in public hospitals and corruption in the health sector. As Greece awaits the conditions of any new bailout deal, medical staff hope the extreme problems of the health sector will be addressed.

Dr Pantelis Vakianis is a nephrologist who runs a private dialysis clinic in Thessaloniki which has contracts from the state. He said he had enough medical supplies and medicines for about two to three months, but the state was behind in payments for many doctors and staff salaries had been cut.

Vakianis said he felt recent years had seen “the gradual destruction of the public health system”, followed by the private system. “We’ve been slowly heading towards a humanitarian crisis,” he warned.

In a pharmacy on a quiet street in Thessaloniki a young chemist was trying to reassure his elderly customers as stress levels ran high. A pensioner on painkillers had run up credit as she did not have enough cash. Others, fearing the uncertainty of when a political deal could be done and when banks would reopen, wanted to buy extra of their prescription medicines ranging from diabetes drugs to antidepressants. After almost two weeks of a Greek bank freeze that has banned money from being transferred abroad, there has been concern that imported drugs – whose supply chain has already been badly disrupted during Greece’s five-year debt crisis – could be hit. Pharmacists have long been struggling with delays in reimbursements from the state, difficulties sourcing drugs and a lack of funds.

“I’ve got enough medicines in stock for at least a couple of weeks and I’m trying to calm people down,” the pharmacist said. “Customers are worried that there might be shortages of things like insulin and painkillers, a lot of women have come in concerned they might not find enough of their birth-control pills and contraceptives. It’s very upsetting but my message to customers is: Don’t panic. We’ll get you your medicines. We’ll do everything we can. Right now my stocks are ok, but if this carries on, in a few weeks it will get difficult.”