Gestor bibliográfico Crisis y Salud

Concern is growing that austerity measures, not recession itself, are causing a European health disaster. Southern European countries, which did the most overspending before 2008 and now have the most crippling debts, have been forced to make drastic cuts over short periods in return for bail-out funds from the “troika” (the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank). Under such pressure, Greece made cuts to its health budget that now seem shortsighted. As the Greek health minister reportedly put it: “These aren’t cuts with a scalpel, they’re cuts with a butcher’s knife.”3 Austerity measures have generally led to a rise in unemployment and a rise in the health problems that go with being out of work. “Had austerity been run like a drug trial, it would have been discontinued, given evidence of its deadly side effects,” says political economist David Stuckler, coauthor with Dr Sanjay Basu of a new book that examines links between the financial crisis and public health, The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills.4