Sexual harassment awareness ad prompts doctors’ ire

Greece’s national union of doctors on Monday issued an angry statement in reaction to a video created by the General Secretariat for Gender Equality as part of a public awareness campaign on sexual harassment.

The clip, which depicts a fictional scenario in which a male pediatrician inappropriately touched a patient’s mother during what is supposed to be a routine examination, casts the medical profession in a negative light, the union claims.

“Indicative of the cursory manner with which the secretariat handled the creation of the video is the fact that it never contacted the Panhellenic Medical Association, doctors’ institutional representative in this country, to ask its opinion or whether a single such incident of harassment by a doctor against a patient or guardian has ever been reported,” the union said in its announcement.

“This particular video casts doubt over the bond of trust that needs to exist between the patient and the doctor,” the union said, demanding that the spot be pulled immediately from YouTube and television.

Earlier, the Athens Medical Association had sent an out-of-court complaint to Gender Equality Secretary Foteini Kouvela over the same video, which it described as “an affront to the honor and standing of Greek doctors.”