Doctors and Ministry arrive at agreement

The Health Ministry and a union of doctors have agreed on mutual terms and clinics will open on Wednesday.

Following an intense 15-hour meeting which started on Tuesday, doctors from the so-called “Zielona Gora Agreement” agreed to open dozens of clinics around the country, after they had been closed in protest since 1 January.

“This has been a success – for our physicians and our patients. We will open the clinics,” the group wrote on its Facebook page just before 7 a.m.

Representatives of the Agreement were called for a meeting with Health Minister Bartosz Arlukowicz at 4 p.m. on Tuesday – a public holiday in Poland.

“Today is a bank holiday, and today is the day on which all general practitioners in Poland have a day off. I want to have an absolutely clear conscience and the full conviction that I did everything for the safety of [Polish] patients,” Arlukowicz said prior to the meeting.

It was not immediately clear what deal was agreed upon between the doctor’s union and the Ministry, however the protests were over such issues as yearly budgets, and contracts for doctors, which in Poland need to be renewed every year.