Poland's health care strike is likely to shift the government's focus to internal matters.

By Anna Dunin

The ongoing strike of medical personnel in Poland looks set to weaken the government and shift its attention to the internal situation and away from foreign engagements, though the crisis is unlikely to bring the government down.

The government is unlikely to be able to provide additional funding for the country's public health care system to the extent that would satisfy striking medical workers and the immigration of health care professionals to western and northern Europe will likely continue to intensify. Faced with a shortage of doctors and nurses, the government will have little choice but to look to the east to recruit medical personnel.

Doctors from 285 of Poland's 600 hospitals launched an open-ended strike on 21 May in which they provided only emergency medical services, according to Polish media sources. The doctors are demanding 100 percent pay raises and more funding for the health care system.

Frustrated by a lack of response from the government, health care workers have begun handing in group resignations (80-90 percent of personnel in some hospitals) that will come into effect in October, and hundreds have begun a hunger strike. While there is no specific information on the number of those striking nationwide, tens of hospitals in each of Poland's 16 regions have joined the strike, while only a few have quit, according to local media sources.

Nurses joined the strike on 19 June, and 20,000 health care workers began a demonstration in front of the prime minister's office. Their demands included pay raises, better working conditions and for Poland to spend 6 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) on health care, rather than the current 3.7 percent. Three nurses representing the group entered the PM's office, and waited for the meeting with the PM, who only met with them after seven days, local media reported.

On 23 June 300 miners and steelworkers, and on 25 June, 100 teachers joined the demonstration. The nurses enjoy public support, which the Poles prove by providing them with food, tents, blankets and money during the ongoing protest. As a form of repayment, the protesting nurses, midwives and doctors conducted free prophylactic examinations for Warsaw's residents on 30-31 June.

The ongoing strike is unlikely to bring down the Polish government, but is highly likely to weaken it significantly. The leader of the coalition, Law and Justice (PiS) Party will focus more on the internal problems instead of international issues, in an attempt to gain public support before the next elections.

The health care workers have kept their protest apolitical and are cautious with the support they receive from the opposition.

Over 67 percent of Poles do not give credence to the government's claims that the protest is a political provocation against the ruling party and support the striking medical personnel. Despite the popular support they enjoy, the health care workers are unlikely to be able to mobilize the general population beyond current levels.

Despite falling support for PiS, it is not expected to be ousted from power. Other members of the coalition, radical parties of the right: Self-Defense and the League of Polish Families are determined to keep the alliance, as they are highly unlikely to be able to form it with any other party, and they are too weak by themselves to form a government.

The coalition has majorities in both houses of the parliament, so a successful vote for premature elections is highly unlikely. The health care strike, along with other internal issues, including a scandal with files of secret collaborators with Polish security, which appear to be disclosed only when convenient to the government, continue to weaken the ruling coalition, however, making it unlikely that it will spend political capital on unpopular external security projects such as the US missile shield or Polish military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Compared to Poland, financial incentives for working in the western part of the EU are significant, particularly in the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany, which do not have enough medical professionals. According to the Polish Chamber of Physicians, 6 percent of Polish doctors emigrated in 2004 through 2006, including 17 percent of the country's anesthetists. One-third of the Polish doctors between the ages of 25 and 35 plans to work abroad, and 80 percent of medical students declare they will emigrate once they graduate. Taking advantage of cheap airfare, some doctors regularly travel to the UK, where they earn US$2,704 in just one weekend by working night shifts. Ireland, England, Spain and Germany actively seek Polish professionals and widely advertise. Sweden, struggling with an aging society, will need to hire 100,000 new health care workers by 2030 and has already turned to the Polish doctors with job offers.

In Poland, the monthly salary for a general doctor is US$460 and US$1,080 for a specialist. The nurses make on average US$388 monthly, and both groups often work up to 80 hours a week. In the UK, a basic nurse salary is US$2,000 a month, but can be many times higher depending on experience and specialty, and the average monthly salary of a general practitioner is US$17,700.

The Polish government will likely offer to fulfill some demands of the striking health care workers, enough to make them return to work, but not enough to keep them in Poland in the long run. The emigration of the young health care workers, who know foreign languages, will likely intensify. The older ones, who want to stay in Poland, will be able to walk away from the protest with a sense of success and dignity.

The PM announced that the government is not able to offer any raises because of the tight budget, and added that the only way to offer to the medical workers what they expect would be by raising taxes. He wants society to consider the potential increase of tax rates in a referendum. Opponents see the referendum as a manipulation and an attempt by the government to decrease public support for the nurses, as the Poles are not able to affect other government spending, including lacking public support military missions abroad. Most Poles (71 percent) are against the referendum and will likely boycott it. If the government offers demanded raises to the medical personnel, it is likely that other social groups including teachers, miners and steelworkers will begin striking and ask for raises as well.

The Polish health care system is in a very poor condition. It is extremely under-funded; the 3.7 percent of GDP spent on health care is one of the lowest among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries, which on average spend 9-10 percent of their GDP for that purpose. Widespread corruption in the system is also a problem, and there has always been a social and governmental degree of leniency in this area. However, starting in 2001, the Poles started perceiving corruption as a serious social problem.

It is likely that the formation of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA) and their recent activity in investigating of the corruption cases in the public health care system, including the arrests of well known doctors, added to the doctors' determination to protest. While the doctors are afraid to take bribes, they likely cannot make the living off their salaries.

It is likely that government's announcements of high economic growth in Poland caused the demand for salary raises by state employees. The unemployment rate has been falling and reached 13 percent in May this year, as compared to 16.5 percent in May 2006. The growth of the GDP accelerated from 3.6 percent in 2005 to 6.1 percent in 2006. While the government takes credit for the economic development, society does not see any improvement in their standard of living, which increases social dissatisfaction with the ruling party.


Faced with the shortage of doctors and nurses, the Polish government is likely to turn to the east, for example to Ukraine, for medical personnel. Ukrainian nurses, making about US$100 monthly, are likely to accept job offers with Polish salaries, which despite being low, are still a much higher than those found in Ukraine. This will likely require a change of regulations which currently make it impossible for foreign medical professionals to work in Poland without official Polish recognition of their diplomas.


Mercyhurst-ISN intelligence briefs offer foresight into issues that are likely to dominate news headlines and policy agendas. The briefs are a joint initiative of the ISN and Mercyhurst Institute for Intelligence Studies and are composed and referenced using open sources.


Click here to return to homepage

In June of 2007 the EU began threatening to cut funding to Nicaragua because of its recent decision to completely ban all abortions

By Rev Michael Bresciani

After WW2 a few voices could be heard that called for America to set the moral tone for the rest of the world. Such leadership is rarely spoken of today and in less than a generation it may have completely reversed.

The Roe v Wade decision of the US Supreme Court on January 22, 1973 is often seen as the first and the worst in a series of America's bad decision making. Some believe it has a life all of its own now throughout the rest of the globe. In a country where the latest news about Paris Hilton far outweighs the question of declining morality it hardly matters what is influencing the EU or the rest of the world to most Americans.

Whether anyone believes Roe v Wade set the precedent for the rest of the world or not it is now becoming the standard for fully developed nations, or is it?

Poland is appealing a recent EU ruling on abortion that was handed down by the European Court of Human Rights that requires it to pay $52,000 in damages for a citizen who has been denied the right to abort her unborn child.

Poland is the birth place of former Pope John Paul who was beloved among the Poles and surely set many of the moral parameters for that nation. Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said he would appeal the decision of the court based simply on the idea that it would not be good for the country.

Yet more recently in June of 2007 the EU began threatening to cut funding to Nicaragua because of its recent decision to completely ban all abortions.

Bert Koenders, Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Netherlands says he wants both the United Nations and the European Union to crack down on pro life countries. Koenders wants the EU to put "women's rights on a higher agenda."

To Bible believing Christians including Catholics the world over this is seen as a very clear agenda but not one that could be termed "high." In fact accept in cases where a women's life or health are at risk this is seen as the very lowest of all causes to the Christian.

The argument from most of Christendom is based not on denying a woman her rights but in completely ignoring the rights of the unborn who have no voice or recourse by which to defend their own right to life. The unborn may not be able to provide testimony at hearings, carry placards or sit on the steps of a court house but many believers figuratively hear their voices crying out continuously with a haunting refrain of "we want to live."

Mankind is thought to be the most physically and morally advanced species on the planet and thus we would assume the most sensitive to the life of its own kind. The death of unborn children it seems can go unfelt if the abortion proceedings are done in a remote and clinically sterile area. This is proving to be a complete unreality. The trauma suffered by women who have undergone abortions is now a matter of public record and the reports are dismal.

In natures realm animals and birds will protect and defend their young even if it means their own death. They have no knowledge of how they are going to feed or care for their young, they rely only on instinct. That is the key word "instinct." It seems that instinct is what is now missing in a post
modern world, not ways and means. In fact in developed countries that have welfare and other provisions for unwed mothers the question of a child's survival is almost moot. It is only a matter of well the child may fare as compared to others in the same society.

Anyone who has taken horticulture or a basic botany course would be familiar with the "brine shrimp" experiment. Scientist discovered that plants in the same room with a tank of brine shrimp had a severe reaction when all of the shrimp were suddenly killed with an electric current. Supposing that it may have been altered by the reactions of humans in the same room, the experiment was conducted under more controlled conditions. The current was set to go through the tank of shrimp randomly and remotely and electrodes were placed on the plants to record the time when or if they reacted to the death of the shrimp. In every case the plants exuded a thin layer of chemicals on their foliage at exactly the same moment the shrimp were killed.

It must be noted that these were only plants and also the reaction was inter species in nature. Does this mean plants are more sensitive to the life of other creatures than humans? The answer is ours to make.

In both the EU and the United States attention is being drawn to the ravages of disease and poverty in African countries especially Darfur. No one can make light of the horrors that are transpiring in these countries but it would seem that they are being used to draw attention away from other horrors that post modern morality refuses to address.

Every few seconds in Africa a person dies (often children) from aids, hunger or warfare. Every few seconds in fully developed countries an unborn child dies at the hands of an abortionist. Is one scourge any worse than the other? That answer is also ours to make.

The best solutions ever accomplished by mankind have come not by pulling the trigger, but by pulling the plug. As our world spirals toward Armageddon it is not likely we will universally pull the plug on abortion but the decision is still open to one individual at a time and it always will be. To wit; "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: Dt. 30:19"


Rev Michael Bresciani is a Christian author and a columnist for several online sites and magazines. For articles and news from around the world visit "The Website for Insight"

Click here to return to homepage

A special Church commission disclosed on Wednesday that about a dozen bishops, who are still living, had ties to Poland’s communist-era secret police.

The commission said that among Poland's 132 bishops, “about a dozen were registered by the security services of communist Poland as ‘secret collaborators’ or ‘operational contacts’ and one was registered as an “agent” of the intelligence service,” reported The Associated Press.

The secret police labeled other bishops as “candidates.” In such cases, security agents gathered material on a person in the hope of recruiting him as an informant.

This news comes at a time when Polish Catholics are still reeling from the shock of discovering that some of its clergy, previously known for their resistance to communism, had ties to the repressive government.

In order to uncover the extent of the connections between the clergy and the security services, the country’s bishops created a commission to investigate. The bishops asked the special commission to review the communist-era files in January, after Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus of Warsaw resigned before his installation over disclosures he had cooperated with the former secret police.

Other prominent clergy have also resigned over similar allegations. This issue is believed to have compromised a minority of clergy, about 10 percent, reported the AP.

But Archbishop Slawoj Leszek Glodz warned at a press conference that the documents do not provide an accurate picture of the extent of cooperation between the bishops and the secret police.

Reading from a statement, he told reporters the documents in the secret police archives “are incomplete and chaotic” and “do not allow to reliably determine the scope, intensity or harm” of any cooperation by the bishops with the security services, reported the AP.

He said there was no evidence that the 12 bishops had signed agreements to collaborate with the secret police. He said, unlike other informants, clergy were not required to provide such signatures. Historians, however, discovered such documents signed by Wielgus.

The archbishop said the report would be forwarded to the Vatican for evaluation.


Source: CNA
Click here to return to homepage

(CNA).- Following a special meeting of the Polish Bishops’ Conference to discuss “the state of the Church in Poland” the bishops released a statement and called for a special day of prayer and repentance on Ash Wednesday, this coming February 21st. The meeting and statement comes in response to recent concern over the collaboration of some Polish clergy with the Communist regime of the late 20th century.

In a communication, which was to be read at every Polish Parish on Sunday, the bishops said they have “painfully followed” the accusations brought against Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus, who resigned as Archbishop of Warsaw after he admitted to collaboration with the Communist secret service (SB) and the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL) intelligence.

The bishops emphasized that despite the archbishop’s admittance of guilt, “It is not up to us to judge a man, a brother, who has served the Church in a faithful and zealous way.”

The prelates noted the tremendous persecution that was felt by the Church and by so many Poles during the era of totalitarian Communist rule and called for a greater investigation of the facts surrounding individual cases. “Only a critical and solid analysis of all the available sources can allow us to approach the truth,” they noted. “One-sided reading of documents created by officers of the repression apparatus of a communist state, hostile towards the Church, can seriously harm people, destroy the links of social trust and as a consequence prove to be a posthumous victory of an inhuman system, in which we were fated to live”

“All too easily it is being forgotten that in the times of communist totalitarianism the whole Church in Poland constantly stood against the enslavement of the society and was an oasis of freedom and truth,” the bishop’s statement said.

“We repeat once more: the Church is not afraid of the truth, even if this is a hard, shameful, truth and approaching this truth is sometimes very painful.”

“We are not afraid to confess that the Church is a community of sinners,” the bishops said, “but at the same time she is holy and called to holiness, since Jesus Christ is her Head, living and working in her – a Saint above all saints. It is before Him that we stand, asking the Holy Ghost to deliver us from evil, fear and our small-mindedness.”

With such a background, the bishops called for this coming Ash Wednesday, “to be a day of prayer and repentance of the whole Polish clergy.” The prelates declared that, “in all the churches in our dioceses, services to the Merciful God should be celebrated for a forgiveness of mistakes and weaknesses in proclaiming the whole Gospel.”

“As clergy,” the bishops continued, we are ‘taken from the people,’ we are a part of Polish society, which as a whole needs to turn away from evil and make a full conversion.”

“There is a great task of reconciliation for the Church in Poland, apart from standing in truth before the face of God. We will not change the past, both the glorious, and the one that we are ashamed of,” the statement adds.

The bishops concluded their communiqué by laying out a plan for investigating other potential collaborators while appealing, “to all the people of the Church, the clergy and the laity, to carry on the examination of their consciences concerning their conduct in the time of totalitarianism.”