Greece's Poor Economy Impacts Citizens' Health

Greece's economy continues to flounder and the fallout is negatively impacting its citizens' health. Greece's economy continues to flounder, and the country's unemployment rate is now at 27 percent. Those circumstances have been reported to be negatively impacting citizens' health. Among the most extreme hazards has come in the way of people infecting themselves with HIV to secure a government assistance payout of 950 dollars. Testing positive for the virus also gives them preferred access to drug substitution programs. This adds to Greece's already stratospheric rise in HIV cases over the past several years. No doubt, the problem isn't being helped by the fact that the number of people working as prostitutes in the country has reportedly increased by 150 percent since the economy collapsed. Healthcare is one of the public services hard hit by the nation's financial problems. Over 25 thousand of the industry's employees have lost their jobs and hospitals that remain open are trying to operate on budgets that have been cut in half. Addressing the needs of patients has become exceedingly difficult. As access to medical help has been declining, suicide rates have been escalating. Between 2007 and 2009 instances of people taking their own lives shot up 17 percent. In the first half of 2011, that number rose by 40 percent.