Emergency Care Doctors in Sofia Resign Collectively In Protest

All doctors from the Emergency Care unit in Sofia have resigned collectively.

The medics are holding a protest at the Health Ministry, according to reports of the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR).

They oppose staff shortages, poor organization of the medics into teams, insufficient control and the poor connection between the 112 emergency phone number and the old short code for medical emergencies only, 150, according to reports of the BGNES news agency.

The wave of indignation was triggered after the proposal for the dismissal of the Director of the Emergency Care unit in Sofia, Georgi Gelev, and his deputy Angel Angelov.

The proposal for the penalty came after the death of a woman aged 35-40 in the Nadezhda district in Sofia who passed away while waiting for an ambulance on Monday evening. According to unconfirmed reports, the ambulance arrived more than 50 minutes after the signal and the emergency team did not have a defibrillator.

In a Thursday statement, Gelev claimed that the state had to take urgent steps to make the healthcare system function, for instance by providing a starting pay of minimum BGN 1500 for doctors and allowing them to specialize in the area of their preference without an entrance exam.

He claimed that the state had to realize that emergency care medics worked under very different conditions compared to the ones in hospitals and were exposed to much greater stress and risk.

Gelev was adamant that he would not resign and dismissed the accusations of poor organization and insufficient control.

He insisted that the sphere of emergency medical care in Bulgaria was plagued by systemic problems.

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