GP's start week-long protest for lighter workload

On Monday, general practitioners kicked off a nationwide week of action to protest against the many extra tasks they have to deal with. They’ll close the week on Friday with a demonstration on the Malieveld in The Hague.

From Monday, the GPs will show videos in their waiting rooms and hang posters around the country to draw attention to the pressure on GP care. Patients will also receive this message on practice wristbands. The GPs will also ask their patients to sign a letter to Minister Ernst Kuipers of Public Health to address the situation.

The National Association of General Practitioners (LHV) expects many thousands of GPs, doctor’s assistants, and practice nurses to protest on the Malieveld on Friday. The interest group has warned for some time that GP care has reached the limit of what it can handle. They want concrete agreements to be made in the healthcare agreements so that changes will actually happen in the coming years. Previous agreements offered no solace, they said.

GPs have been given many extra tasks in recent years, and the coronavirus pandemic only exacerbated that. Due to waiting lists at hospitals and mental healthcare, patients end up at their GP’s office with more complicated problems than the doctor has the tools to handle. The government and health insurers also added all kinds of extra administrative tasks to their plate.

A spokesperson for Pride Amsterdam said they did not see an immediate reason to take additional measures because of the monkeypox virus. "You have to be careful not to stigmatize by addressing a very general group about this. The RIVM speaks about men who have sex with men, but the Pride community is much broader than that." He believes that the event's programming is also far from this. "You don't go to Pride to sleep around, but to express yourself as being in favor of equal rights and to be whoever you want."

The chance that infected people transfer the virus to another person is fairly small. Everyone who contracted the virus became infected after "intensive physical contact, including sexual contact." That is why people outside of an infected person's close circle no longer have to quarantine for three weeks, as long as they do not have any symptoms themselves. Kuipers made this decision last week on the advice of the council of experts providing advice on behalf of the RIVM.