TENERIFE HEALTH WORKERS TO STRIKE OVER UNDERFUNDING

Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Thursday December 17 2009

HEALTH service staff across the Canaries will strike on Friday December 18 over budget cuts.

by James Tweedie

Some 16,000 Doctors, nurses and other staff at hospitals and local clinics will walk out.

They are angry at regional government plans to cut the health budget by 2.5 per cent, and the ongoing delays to construction of the long-promised hospital in southern Tenerife.

In Tenerife staff have organised pickets at Candelaria hospital in the regional capital Santa Cruz and the nearby Hospital Universitario in La Laguna municipality.

The trade unions and professional association involved in the industrial action stressed that emergency services would not be affected.

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