MD’s Go On Strike – Death Rates Drop

From the British Medical Journal comes an article titled, “Doctors’ strike in Israel may be good for health”

Medical doctors in Israel went on strike in March, 2000 and according to the article, “Death rates have dropped considerably in most of the country since physicians in public hospitals implemented a programme of sanctions three months ago.”

As a result of the strike, the article states that, “hundreds of thousands of visits to outpatient clinics have been canceled or postponed along with tens of thousands of elective operations.”

According to the article, a local newspaper surveyed burial societies to find out whether the MD strike was affecting deaths in the country.

In the article, one burial society director stated “the number of funerals we have performed has fallen drastically” while another director declared, “there definitely is a connection between the doctors’ sanctions and fewer deaths. We saw the same thing in 1983 [when the Israel Medical Association applied sanctions for four and a half months].”

Source: BMJ Doctors’ strike in Israel may be good for health