Successive attacks on health professionals provoke unionists’ anger, amid demands to raise security levels in health institutions

Agadir24

Trade union activists denounced the successive attacks on a number of nurses and doctors working in national health institutions, which they described as “unjustified” and revealing “a lack of appreciation for the prestige of public institutions.”

The same activists stressed that “every patient is an urgent case who has the right to complain about waiting, provided that he expresses it through legal means,” noting that “the price of these illegal violations is paid by the nurse or doctor.”

In this context, the Deputy National Secretary-General of the National Health Union, Rahal Lahsini, revealed that “the repeated attacks on health workers are unacceptable regardless of their causes and circumstances, and it is urgent to provide a safe work environment.”

Rahhal explained that “doubling the number of security guards inside health institutions will contribute, even to a certain extent, to reducing the resort of some citizens to using illegal means to express their dissatisfaction with health services.”

The spokesman warned that “increasing the number of security guards is an urgent requirement to put an end to the security chaos that many health institutions are experiencing, but we should not rely on it alone, because it may mean making this group in turn a target for the aggressors.”

The union activist pointed out that “some citizens hold the health cadres responsible for the imbalances that the sector is experiencing, especially the huge shortage of human resources that makes them wait for a long time inside health institutions,” adding that “complaining about this issue is a legitimate right, because health is not a place for waiting and every patient is an urgent case, provided that this complaint does not turn into aggressive behavior towards the health cadres.”

The National Secretary General of the National Health Union concluded that “the solution lies in keeping up with this increase by removing the misunderstanding between the citizen and the health system, the price of which is paid by the nurses and doctors who are at the forefront of this system.”

It is noteworthy that a nurse in the emergency department in Mechraa Belksiri was subjected last Sunday to a heinous attack with a knife by a patient. The regional office of the National Health Union in Sidi Kacem, affiliated with the Moroccan Labor Union, attributed the incident to “the lack of security and the small number of guards, despite repeated appeals and promises by the absent official to fill this security gap in the health center.”

The police in Mechra Belksiri arrested two brothers, aged 17 and 20, after a video clip was circulated showing them assaulting and insulting a health worker in one of the city’s hospitals, and referred them to the competent public prosecutor.

In addition, last Sunday, while on duty at the emergency department of Driouch Hospital, a doctor was physically assaulted by two of the patient’s companions “after he asked them to wait a few seconds to examine the patient who was with them, because he was providing treatment for another, more urgent case,” according to a statement from the National Health University branch in Driouch Province.

Before that, a midwife at the rural health center in Malaab, Errachidia, was subjected to verbal and psychological assault by a client last June, according to a statement by the Independent Union of Nurses in Errachidia, which confirmed that it had recorded “three cases of assault” on health workers working in the region recently.

These union activities believe that strengthening security in health institutions is a clear-cut demand that is not open to discussion in order to stop attacks, especially those committed by people in an abnormal situation, with the necessity of eradicating the phenomenon from its roots by providing a sufficient number of cadres, and sensitizing citizens to the necessity of respecting the health facility and resorting to legal means of protest instead of targeting health cadres.