Hundreds of medical staff with non-EU diplomas have started a three-day hunger strike in France to protest against how they are being treated, and discriminatory pay conditions.
French media report that around 300 people are taking part in the planned strike – which aims to win the “padhue”, the acronym by which this group is known, greater protection.
Although President Emmanuel Macron’s Government pledged last year to give them more protection, some still earn three times less than their colleagues who have European diplomas, they said.
“We find ourselves in an unacceptably precarious situation,” Abdelhalim Bensaïdi, a striking diabetes specialist who works at Nanterre Hospital in Paris, told the public radio station France Inter.
They often also lack guarantees that they will be able to remain on French territory, as their contracts are renewed every six months.
A year ago, Macron acknowledged that the situation was untenable. “In some cases. they are holding our healthcare services together, while we leave them in a precarious administrative situation,” he said at the time.
Euronews reports that his government pledged to reform these workers’ status, in part driven by a desire to fill medical vacancies across swathes of the country.
Euronews article – Hundreds of foreign doctors go on hunger strike in France (Open access)
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