Spain's Exhausted Medics Demand Post-virus Job Security

Madrid, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Jul, 2020 ) :Spain hailed its medic heroes during the coronavirus crisis, but as infections fall many frontline staff have been left depressed and traumatised by their experience, fearful of an insecure future.

With 36.3 percent of public healthcare workers without a permanent contract, according to one survey, demonstrations calling for change are growing.

"We have to end this low-budget health system," says Patricia Calvo, a 40-year-old doctor, who made her own protective gear out of bin bags at the height of the pandemic.

"I finished specialising in 2010 but I'm still on a temporary contract," says the doctor from the southern city of Granada where she works with 14 other medics, most of whom are in the same situation.

"There was a major outbreak at our medical centre, people died and (at the start) we had to deal with everything on our own."When the virus hit, costing more than 28,400 lives, Calvo and her husband, who is also a doctor, spent months without hugging their children for fear of infecting them.

And they themselves were afraid of getting sick in a country where 10 percent of healthcare workers contracted the virus, twice the rate of the general population.