Doctors May End Strike Soon

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30419, 18 April 1964, Page 13

Doctors May End Strike Soon

(N Z. Press Association —Copyrtghn BRUSSELS, April 17. Hope rose today that the 17-day-old strike of Belgium’s 12,000 doctors and dentists may be called off. Reliable sources said nine ministers who met last night drafted a document for presentation to the strikers’ representatives.

Leaving the late-night Cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister (Mr Lefevre) told reporters: “You can expect a pleasant surprise tomorrow.’’

The Cabinet met to plan a new initiative which could reopen negotiations with the Medical Federation on amending the National Health Law, which the doctors oppose.

The Ministers are believed to have drafted a letter answering 11 points of principles which the strike leaders drew up to define their opposition to the law. In these points, the doctors made clear that they are prepared to co-operate with a system of national sickness insurance but remain opposed to all clauses which, in their view, destroy medicine as a free profession, curtail the patients’ free choice of a doctor or end the secrecy between doctor and patient.

The new moves were set in motion by a series of mediation conferences in which the rectors of the country’s four national universities separately met strike leaders and Mr Lefevre. The doctors’ leader, Dr. Andre Wynen, said after meeting the rectors yesterday that moves were under way which could lead to success within the next day or two. DOCTORS’ WARNING

The doctors warned last night patients might pay with their lives if the strike was not settled soon. The National Federation of Medical Unions issued a statement which said “indescribable disorder” reigned in the emergency medical services. The statement described as inadequate measures taken by civilian and military authorities for provision of an emergency medical service. It was necessary to sound the alarm, it said. The statement confirmed reports by several individual doctors last night that in many hospitals it had become impossible to isolate contagious from non-contagious cases. It said the prevention of epidemics could no longer be guaranteed, particularly in the

case of children. Children with influenza were often lying side by side with those who had measels or tonsilitis.

But the Ministry of the interior claimed that the situation was becoming more normal. The emergency service operated by the Government since Sunday was in general “working well.”