Tension broke out outside the General Hospital of Nikaia on Thursday as healthcare workers gathered to protest the visit of Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis, who had arrived for the inauguration of new emergency department facilities. The minister was surrounded by riot police, who cleared a path for his entry, prompting further anger from those present.
Hospital staff had announced the mobilisation in advance, and the Piraeus Labour Centre, the Greek Communist Party (KKE), and the anti-capitalist coalition ANTARSYA had called for protests the previous day. According to footage broadcast live by the television station OPEN, large numbers of healthcare workers and other protesters gathered at the scene, strongly criticising the minister and attempting to block his entry into the hospital.
Panos Papanikolaou, a neurosurgeon and director at the hospital, explained the reasons for the protest in a statement to the outlet TVXS. ‘In addition to the well-known reasons we have to protest, which are related to the disgrace to which they have brought the health system, there is additional anger at the hospital,’ he said. ‘Because Georgiadis stripped the hospital of dozens of established posts for specialist doctors. He removed them overnight. As for his presence at the inauguration, let the world know what he came to inaugurate: half of half of the 20 projects that have been under way for 20 months and have not been completed.’
Footage also showed riot police preventing healthcare workers from entering the emergency department, further inflaming the situation.
Speaking to the television station SKAI after the incident, Georgiadis dismissed the protesters’ concerns and attacked their politics. ‘The Minister of Health cannot give in to the violence of the communists. The Greek people have voted for me,’ he said. He claimed that as he approached the hospital entrance, an egg and a bottle of water were thrown at him, and that protesters subsequently formed a cordon, pushed forward, and told him he would not be allowed in.
In a post on X, Georgiadis wrote:
‘Some communists tried to forcefully prevent me from inaugurating the new emergency rooms of Nikaia Hospital! They failed because I am not afraid of them. Democracy never gives in to violence!’
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