For two months, a blanket of furnace has weighed on Central Europe and in particular Hungary, with temperatures ranging from 35° to 40°. In hospitals, the suffocating heat has become a political issue driven by the main opponent of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
2 min
With our correspondent in Budapest, Florence Labruyere
The Hungarian government bans the press from hospitals. But it cannot ban opposition leader Péter Magyar, who is a member of the European Parliament. The Prime Minister’s new rival Viktor Orban So he visits the hospitals, thermometer in hand: “ Here we are at the Péterffy hospital and at noon it is already 38.8 degrees. This is reality! This afternoon the temperature will surely exceed 40 degrees. “In many hospitals it was 38 degrees this summer, even in intensive care patients. Either there is no air conditioning or it is broken.
Also readHungary: Some Ukrainian refugees no longer welcome
With his phone, Péter Magyar films the misery: no soap or disinfectant in the rooms or toilets, ceilings that are collapsing, elevators that have been broken for ages. The government prefers to invest in propaganda, denounces the politician: ” In Hungary, the Minister of Propaganda, Antal Rogan, has a budget of 650 billion forints per year! »
On public television, there is a contrast: we see the Secretary of State for Health, Péter Takacs, visiting brand new hospitals. The government, he says, has spent hundreds of billions of forints on air conditioning in hospitals: ” We can’t renovate everything at the same time! If we change the air conditioning in a hospital, we have to transfer the patients elsewhere. If we did the work everywhere, we would no longer be able to care for the patients. »
Also readVisas: European Union temporizes with Hungary
InHungaryhealth expenditure represents less than 6% of GDP according to the OECD with figures from 2022. Hungary is one of the countries in Europe that invests the least in public health. According to Péter Magyar, the public health budget is short of 500 billion forints per year.
Who is Peter Magyar, Viktor Orban’s new opponent?
A former official in the Orban regime, this forty-year-old founded a new party that won 30% of the votes in the last European elections. With Hungary less than two years away from the legislative elections, Péter Magyar, who has become a member of the European Parliament and plans to challenge Orban in the next election, regularly posts videos on social networks to denounce the dilapidated health system and the negligence of the regime.