Greek Free Clinic Says Child Mortality Has Risen

For the first time in Greece’s peace time history the birth-death indicator is negative and child mortality has risen, the spokesman of the free clinic “Metropolitan Social Clinic of Elliniko,” Giorgos Vihas, told ANA-MPA, during a presentation of poverty and health data.
The charity group, along with a soup kitchen operating in Athens, refused last Friday to accept the European Parliament’s “Citizen’s Prize” for 2015, in protest against the austerity policies imposed on Greece.
According to data collected by Prolepsis Institute and presented by the charity group, six out of 10 students in 64 state schools in Athens are facing food shortages, while 61 pct of students in the aforementioned schools have one unemployed parent and 17 pct have both parents unemployed.
Another 11 pct of children are without social security and 7 pct as lived without electricity for more than a week in 2014, while 3 pct still lived without power. The charity group also said 406 schools from around Greece received help in 2014 their 61,876 students.
“The policies which were implemented and continue to be implemented in our country have pushed over three million homeless and destitute unemployed citizens out of public healthcare,” Vihas said.
“We don’t turn our backs to Europe or the European people who stand in impressive solidarity. But we have to turn our backs to the politicians and the institutions, like the European Parliament, who have for a long time dealt with the human lives as accounting numbers,” he stressed, a mentality that has become Europe’s “shame.”
(Source: ANA-MPA)

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