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"You cannot save the future!"

Today more than 1,000 students, physicians and scientists gathered in Lecture Hall 1 of the Lecture Hall Centre of the Vienna General Hospital AKH to protest against the threatened budget cuts for medical unis. For medical unis alone, the threatened cuts would mean staff redundancies of 450 people by 2013 which would have to be implemented without delay.

(Vienna, 19 Oct. 2010) Today more than 1,000 students, physicians and scientists gathered in Lecture Hall 1 of the Lecture Hall Centre of the Vienna General Hospital AKH to protest against the threatened budget cuts for medical unis. For medical unis alone, the threatened cuts would mean staff redundancies of 450 people by 2013 which would have to be implemented without delay.

For the medical universities this would have direct consequences on healthcare and patient care in eastern Austria as well as drastic disadvantages in international research competition. Also major construction projects such as the new building to be erected for the Cancer Research Institute are at risk. Particularly threatening is the situation in teaching: the MedUni Vienna's PhD programmes, which are among the most successful worldwide, run the risk of being abolished now.

The imminent staff reductions would also have immediate consequences on the training for medical specialists: This could result in closures of individual medical specialisations.

Present at MedUni Vienna’s day of action today are representatives of the Rector's Office, University Council, Senate and works council as well as Josef Penninger, Director of IMBA, who has explicitly reiterated his demand that Austrian medical university-based research be promoted by government and the private sector.

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