Back Where They Started

The nursing staffs and the few physicians on emergency service at the hospitals were drooping with fatigue as the Belgian doctors' strike dragged into its third week. The wards were jammed with patients, many of whom would normally be treated at home, and, though the emergency service had worked fairly smoothly, spokesmen for the strikers now warned that it would not be continued. Because contagious diseases were sometimes bedded next to others in the crowded hospitals, doctors also warned of imminent epidemics. Belgian husbands with pregnant wives were taking them over the border to France, Holland or West Germany to be sure of obstetrical care.

When the government began to draft doctors, they staged a gigantic slowdown, demanding that the army requisition their cars or provide military transport, supply all equipment right down to little black bags. Since 80% of Belgium's anesthetists are women, and not subject to military service, many operations could not be performed despite the call-up. An army medical officer, one of some 20 flown in from Belgian forces in West Germany to help, declared: "I am ashamed of being a doctor after seeing what is going on here." At week's end, two doctors and a technician were charged with the sabotage of a cable supplying electricity for the X-ray room at a Brussels clinic.

Premier Theo Lefevre called in the rectors of Belgium's four universities, ostensibly to talk about nuclear research but actually to discuss the strike. From that point on, the rectors acted as mediators, helped both sides to retreat from impossible positions. The government succeeded in getting the doctors to end the strike before resuming negotiations on the new health-insurance law that had provoked the walkout.

Still undecided were the basic issues. The new law established a schedule of fees that doctors could charge under the Belgian health-insurance system, and restricted them to no more than three afternoons a week to see private patients. The doctors are convinced that this law will lower their incomes and oblige them to practice assembly-line medicine, and they insist that government inspection of their records would violate the secrecy of the doctor-patient relationship. They also fear that the law will lead to uncomfortably accurate auditing of their income-tax returns.

All that they have won is the government's commitment that parts of the law can be modified. As one Brussels newspaper pointed out: "We end up where we should have started."

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