As public sector medical workers held a warning protest, doctor Igor Nikolov says that their situation was bad even before the devastating hacking attack that took down the public healthcare system. It’s believed that the fund paid a ransom to hackers who encrypted their data and kept the system offline for over a week, stopping procedures and delaying the payment of salaries.

This was the final straw. From heroes of the pandemic, who were promised everything for their work, medical workers now feel that they are seriously neglected. We planned a warning strike in November, that was postponed after promises from the Ministry, but now we see well organized, massive strikes in different institutions. This tells us that the problem is not located in one place but is systemic. We risk losing our healthcare workers, said doctor Nikolov, who leads the VMRO-DPMNE commission on healthcare.