It was in a medical centre in the Chana area of the city of Granada that a patient grabbed a doctor by the throat and began to throttle him.

Fortunately, a security guard saw what was happening and restrained the aggressor until the Policía Nacional arrived to take him away. The victim was attended to by his fellow staff members but came away from it with a very red neck and breathing difficulties.

Although the 50-year-old aggressor had been attended to at the medical centre on several occasions, he had never been violent nor verbally aggressive before.

Naturally, the staff at the medical centre are not impressed and have been protesting in front of the building. The representative of the workers union, the CCOO, said that if patients have complaints, they should fill in a complaint form and not fill in members of staff – or words to that effect.

According to information facilitated by the Consejería de Salud y Familias, last year there were 124 attacks against public, medical staff just in the province of Granada. These range from physical attacks to verbal ones. In fact, 95 of them were verbal attacks in the form of insults and threats, the rest were actual physical attacks. There have never been as many attacks as there have been in the last five years.

Attacking a teacher or medical personnel is now punishable under the Criminal Law Code, which means that if found guilty, prison sentences are handed down. Under this new ruling, the first personnel to go to prison was a mother who attacked a male teacher in Fuentevaqueros in 2011.

(News: City & Metropolitan Area, Granada, Andalucia)