At 10:30 a.m. on Thursday 24 October, two employees of the National Organization for Medicines (EOF), a prosecutor, and a man who would later identify himself as an undercover police officer, arrived at the Metropolitan Community Clinic at Hellenikon (MKIE), a makeshift medical center run by volunteers in the southern suburbs of Athens.
“We went into the medicine store room together,” said Vassiliki Iliopoulou, a volunteer at the clinic, in a telephone interview. “They told us that there was a complaint, an official one,” she said. The inspection team had been ordered to visit the clinic, which is on the grounds of an abandoned U.S. Air Force base, by the Athens police narcotics squad.
According to Mrs. Iliopoulou, the prosecutor – a woman – and the three men were trying to establish whether the clinic had any medicines, such as strong pain relievers, psychiatric medicines or opiate suppressors that needed special permits. “The ones that need special prescriptions,” Mrs. Iliopoulou explained. “What I told them, was that we didn’t have any,” she said.
When asked whether the inspection team showed her any identification, Mrs. Iliopoulou remarked: “We didn’t ask them, and they didn’t show us any. We have nothing to hide. At the end they gave us a copy of their report, with signatures, official stamps”. The inspection did not disrupt the operation of the clinic.
It was all rather awkward, as a kind gesture by one member of the inspection team showed: “She gave us a small bag of medicines,” Mrs. Iliopoulou said of the prosecutor, “just like many citizens do”. Mrs. Iliopoulou was alluding to the fact that many people donate pharmaceutical products to the clinic, to be given to those who can’t afford to buy them. So if the prosecutor knew what the clinic stood for, why did she proceed with the search?
When asked if there had been another such inspection, Mrs. Iliopoulou acknowledged that several months ago representatives of the Athens Medical Association had shown up at MKIE, claiming it had to be shut down. The volunteers who run the clinic are very vocal about government cuts in the health care sector and have often voiced their concerns to national and international media, such as the New York Times and the BBC (see end of text).
Two clinics in under three hours
At 1:00 p.m. later that day, an investigation team, again composed of EOF representatives, a prosecutor and police officers, arrived at the central offices of the Greek chapter of the Doctors of the World NGO, in a decrepit area of central Athens.
On the ground floor, the NGO runs a small clinic that used to cater mostly to migrants and substance abusers but during the last four years has seen more and more people visit, in order to get access to free care and medicines.
Liana Mailli, a pediatrician who heads Doctors of the World in Greece, described what happened in a telephone interview: “The complaint was that narcotics were being peddled here. It goes without saying that they didn’t find anything wrong. All the documents were in order,” she said. The clinic stores sensitive pharmaceuticals, some of which require special permits. The way they are dispensed needs to be recorded in detail.
“We requested information as to who made the complaint but we did not get an answer. There had been an inspection by people from the prefecture [responsible for oversight], again after a complaint. This inspection was for illegal medicines and of course no such thing was found,” she said.
As to why it all happened, Mrs. Mailli did not mince her words: “It’s not by chance that at the same time as the raid took place here, there was a raid at the Metropolitan Community Clinic, which is also a social health care center. They barged into the two biggest social medical centers in the country. It is a concerted attack on institutions providing solidarity in our country.”
In a press release issued later, the NGO stated that it would seriously consider taking legal action.
“Doctors of the World were the first NGO that in view of the coming crisis readapted its programs and turned its attention to Greece,” Mrs. Mailli stressed. “We are trying to provide medical and welfare services to the destitute, to migrants, refugees, the uninsured, to all those who lack the basics and to those who, because of the situation, no longer have access to the public health care system. This probably annoys them,” Mrs. Mailli concluded, alluding to the authorities. She said that she will publicize what happened at an international level, through the NGO's branches in other countries.
What happened according to the authorities
An official police statement (in Greek) would later say that the inspection was part of a narcotics squad operation, following a complaint that “there were big quantities of psychiatric drugs that were being dispensed without proper formulation” in both clinics. The result of the inspection was “negative”, according to the statement.
The work of MKIE has been coverd by the BBC (television and online), CNN and the New York Times.
The work of Doctors of the World has been covered by the BBC, the Guardian and the New York Times.