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Patients who can not afford treatment or hospitals without critical supplies can be among the victims of financial crisis

Adonis Kostakos is unemployed and people with diabetes. At the age of 50, he has recently worked on a regular basis four years ago in the port of Piraeus. At that time he used Greece 's public hospital system that his blood sugar checked and get his medication.

In these days do not receive unemployment benefits, he can not afford to pay for his drugs or the new hospital fee ? 5 introduced as part of Greece 's austerity measures.

So today has been Kostakos a free clinic in the Perama shipbuilding town where he lives to his medicine. The drop-in surgery of the global charity Medecins du Monde run was originally set to meet for illegal immigrants. But today there's only native Greeks.

Victims of the financial crisis that Greece 's has pushed health care system to the brink - show poster on the wall, war and famine, but the lone doctor, George Padakis, 30, to do with another kind of disaster have.

"I have no insurance and I 'm jobless," says Kostakos. "I have heard of this clinic from a friend. I was going to the public hospital, but now I can do 't do just that. I know a lot of people in this city, in the same situation as me, 10 of them personally. "

Next in line is Nikos Famalis. He is 72 and has several health problems.

"I 've come here, since it opened," he says, as he clutched a handful of boxes of the medicine show. "I have to have insurance when I was younger, but I don 't have the right papers now. I' m trying to get papers for free treatment in public hospitals, but it takes time. "

The Greek system is a bureaucratic nightmare, filled with endless paperwork and jump tire. Those who have no resources of any kind can qualify for free health care, but even then the state will only pay for some drugs.

And even those entitled to discounted or free medications can often not pharmacists to them and are asked instead to pay the costs in advance and reimbursement. Others come to the clinic. A middle-aged man with swollen legs from heart disease needs diuretics, a younger man who once worked at the nearby shipyards, comes to be used for treating high blood pressure.

"When I came here \," says Padakis, "I didn 't expect that treatment Greeks. I had no idea so many Greeks had these problems. I thought I would work with illegal immigrants.

On a typical day at the clinic sees about 20 people. "The problems are never easy. Sometimes people don 't have the proper insurance, or it takes time for the right papers to come through. Sometimes it's as simple as the fact that they don' t some ? for the bus have to go into hospital for an appointment, so they come here.

"These people are often new poor [created by the financial crisis] and an additional problem is that the hospitals are now charging each time someone visits. The Greek heath system is just getting worse and worse," he adds sadly. "A health system that was not the best is becoming worse and worse."

"The people who can afford to get immediate treatment, but what is happening in areas with high unemployment as is that people with health problems are not always checked up or, perhaps, as a patient A -. 42 - year-old man with diabetes - were not taking medication when they should because they 't afford it, so what should be a manageable health problem becomes a crisis.

"He said to me". You see, I have four kids and I worked only 3 days in last month "\"

If the clinic in Perama is an example of how bad things have got for those at the bottom of Greece's ruined economy, elsewhere doctors and patients have their own horror stories to tell in a corrupt health system where paying bribes to doctors is commonplace.

As a result of the crisis, doctors 'wages in the public system in line with other state workers have shortened, while fear and hospitals face shortages of materials brought together on a regular basis.

The most harmful is, as already unequal health care system become even more unequal - a three-tiered affair that systematically discriminated against the most vulnerable and least able to afford health care, marginalize them even further in society.

The private hospitals are not immune to the crisis. In the maternity hospital Iasos Pantedis Ioannidis and Jenny, two young registrars to celebrate the birth of her first child.

A bright, lively and modern city, 16,500 shipments handled per year, the hospital has had to have their fees reduced by 35% to be in response to the crisis, to ensure the flow of patients through its doors to continue.

The man who carried out the operation is to sit with them, Anastasios Pachydakis, 38, trained for a while in the London 's Homerton Hospital in Hackney. Free Pachydakis has two operations this year for some long-term patients, whose business he hopes to hold in the future because they do not have the money to pay him.

"Most of my colleagues who had to cut their fees in private hospitals," says Pantedis Ioannidis.

Working in public hospitals - a radiologist and Jenny Pantedis as an ophthalmologist - they have seen where the effects of the crisis affected the most.

There is a crisis whose consequences will be inherited by their newborn son, not least due to the ? 35,000 debt by each new child born now in Greece.

For the two doctors so far one of the biggest impacts has been thrust on her income in a country where the salaries of public servants, including doctors, whether traditionally bonuses at Christmas and Easter and summer holidays, what an additional two months ' result. The "presents" as they are known to have been abolished as part of the Greek government 's austerity program.

"It is not just the bonuses," says Pantedis, "they have other allowances as well as an allowance for expensive medical text cut pounds."

Then there are the problems facing the hospitals. In a busy emergency room in Athens, ambulance drivers complain they are not always sure if they are paid, while many hospitals have periodic lack of equipment.

"I am in Athens \ work 's largest hospital," says Jenny, "and there has been times this year, if we' ve missed a lot of important things. Because the hospital suppliers owed money, we have No stent. Then there was two weeks if we do not we use the paper towels to wipe off gel patients had. We were using toilet paper and kitchen towels. That was six months. "

Pantedis 's story is shocking. A says a shortage in interocular lenses for cataract operations this year in hospitals in Athens meant a rush on his own clinic, which was well filled, forcing his clinic to new patients require the procedure to be refused.

The Nikaia public hospital is very different than the modern Iasos. It is clean, but old, with dark windows and the room bare and functional. Outside one of his buildings a dog sunning itself, where the ambulance drop off their patients.

Dr. Olga Kosmopoulou, a specialist in infectious diseases such as HIV, wears a badge on her coat. She explains that it marks a six-year campaign against corruption by doctors and others in Greece 's to eliminate health system. It is a campaign, she says ruefully, that was "\ completely unsuccessful."

"We have a private sector that is highly profitable, and we had a public sector that has delivered good results," she says. "But the fact is it does not work and now it is not because the doctors had their wages reduced.

"The problems are lack of materials that are essential in the public system, and the fact that I don 't feel I am really into public medicine do not work anymore, because people must pay at so many points, "she adds.