Rhodes: Gennadi health centre opens amid protest

The new Regional Multi-purpose Health Centre of Gennadi, in southern Rhodes, is being inaugurated on Friday 21 August 2026 at 19:00, in the presence of Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis and with local authorities and bodies from the island invited. At exactly the same time, the Struggle Committee of Residents of Southern Rhodes is calling a protest gathering outside Gennadi Town Hall, in an announcement dated 20 August 2026. The coincidence of the two events at the same place and the same hour gives the ceremony a character that goes beyond the opening of a building, since the question the residents raise is not about the building but about the staff who will run it day to day. Southern Rhodes is going through the months of heaviest pressure on health services, as visitors and seasonal workers add to the permanent residents.

The facility is housed on the ground floor of the Gennadi Municipal Hall, in a space of 600 square metres. The space was granted in September 2023 to the 2nd Health Region of Piraeus and the Aegean for thirty years. The renovation was included in the project entitled ‘Energy and Operational Upgrade and Renovation of the Health Centres of Archangelos, Empona, Rhodes and the Gennadi Regional Health Centre’, with a total budget of 3,712,737.07 euros plus VAT of 24%. This is therefore an intervention that concerns not only Gennadi but a network of primary care units across the island, from Archangelos and Empona to the city of Rhodes. For southern Rhodes, where distances to the hospital in the island’s capital are measured in tens of kilometres, having an upgraded facility has practical significance.

The Struggle Committee focuses on staffing. “For all these past months we have been without doctors in Southern Rhodes,” it states in its announcement, setting out four demands: upgrading the Gennadi Regional Health Centre to a Health Centre with permanent specialist staff, making its nursing staff permanent, increasing the number of ambulances and EKAV staff, and filling the vacant posts at the Hospital of Rhodes. The Committee also maintains that lives have been lost because of the shortages. That claim is attributed solely to the Committee itself, is not accompanied by evidence in the announcement and has not been confirmed by any competent service.

As of publication, no reply from the Health Ministry or the 2nd Health Region to the points raised by the Committee has been made public, nor has any timetable been announced for staffing the new facility with permanent medical personnel. The issue of vacant posts recurs regularly in the regions, as in the case of the shortages of doctors at hospitals on the mainland. On Rhodes the pressure is intensified by the tourist population of the summer months, as the emergency hiring of lifeguards earlier this year also showed. The real picture of how the health centre works will emerge from the duty roster that applies after the inauguration. Until then, the crucial question for residents remains whether the facility will operate with a steady medical presence or with short-term secondments, something the announcements so far do not clarify. The Struggle Committee has not announced any further mobilisation.