Spain doctors win suit for lack of protection from COVID-19

BARCELONA, Spain – Spain’s medical community has scored a victory after a court ordered that a regional government must compensate doctors with up to $56,000 for having to work without personal protection suits during the devastating early months of the pandemic.

The lawsuit brought by a doctors union is the first of its kind to be won in Spain, whose health care system was pushed to the brink when COVID-19 first struck.

“This ruling is groundbreaking in Spain,” Dr. Víctor Pedrera, secretary general of the Doctors’ Union of Valencia CESM-CV that filed the suit, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Pedrera, a family doctor, said he got ill with COVID-19 shortly after it hit Spain in 2020 and spent two months at home “quite badly off and with no idea of what was being done for treatment.”

The court in the eastern province of Alicante ruled late Tuesday that the region of Valencia failed to protect the health of its doctors during the first three months of the pandemic. The judge said the lack of personal protection suits created “a serious safety and health danger for all health workers, especially for doctors due to their direct exposure.”