AfD on health and care

The AfD wants every maternity clinic to be reachable within 40 minutes at most and births to be attended one-to-one. Doctors, pediatricians and midwives are to be trained in Thuringia and kept in the state.

The AfD wants women to reach a maternity clinic quickly. The trip should take 40 minutes at most. During birth, one midwife should care for just one woman. Thuringia should train and keep more doctors and midwives.

Wards for premature babies are to be kept. The platform treats short distances to the delivery room and one-to-one care as a safety issue for mother and child. In the party's view, the experience of birth also affects whether women want more children. Prenatal and postnatal care and help with physical recovery after pregnancy are to be guaranteed.

The AfD wants more university places in medicine and dentistry and state scholarships for students who commit to working in underserved regions for ten years. This is meant to secure local outpatient care, especially in rural areas.

Thuringia does not have enough doctors, especially in the countryside. The AfD wants more university places for medicine. Students should get money from the state. In return, they later work for ten years in areas with few doctors.

The platform points to practices without successors, an aging population and long waits for specialists. Besides more places and scholarships, places at the University of Jena should be reserved for applicants from Thuringia; municipalities may set up similar scholarship models. Internships and medical training should count more in admissions. Doctors and dentists should also be paid fully and adequately, and living and working conditions in rural areas should improve. The AfD wants to cut bureaucracy in health care.

The AfD wants to preserve rural hospitals providing basic and standard care and not hand them over to private hospital chains. The state should meet its investment obligations, and a state-owned company should ease the financial burden on municipal operators.

The AfD wants to keep small hospitals in the countryside. They should belong to towns, counties or non-profit groups. Private hospital companies should not buy them. The state of Thuringia should give more money to hospitals.

The platform criticizes flat-rate case payments (the DRG system) and the sale of municipal hospitals to profit-oriented chains. The state should clear the investment backlog and meet its legal funding duties. Municipal hospitals should form regional networks, backed by a new state company. Hospital planning should prioritize a dense emergency care network in rural areas, and ambulances should arrive faster. Working and rest time rules should be strictly observed, and administrative staff should take paperwork off hospital personnel.

The AfD wants to strengthen care within the family: relatives should receive as much money as care services, get better advice and earn pension credits for their care work. In nursing homes, better working conditions should bring back former care workers.

Many people care for their parents or grandparents at home. The AfD wants to give them more money. They should get as much as a care service. This care work should also count toward their pension. Work in nursing homes should get better too.

According to the platform, care mostly takes place in families, usually carried by women who are often left alone with financial and organizational problems. Adult children should be able to choose deliberately to care for older relatives. A support network should improve advice, and care rates should rise to the level paid to professional services. Family care work should count adequately toward pensions. For residential care, the AfD wants to win back staff who left and reduce pressure to cut costs.

The AfD wants applicants in medicine and nursing without a qualification from an EU country to pass an equivalence exam and prove German at C1 level. It is critical of actively recruiting doctors and nurses abroad.

Some doctors and nurses trained outside the EU. The AfD wants them to take an exam. They should also speak German very well. The AfD does not want to actively bring in staff from other countries.

According to the platform, the exam is meant to ensure that local quality standards are met. C1 is a high level of the European language framework at which a person uses a language fluently and confidently. The AfD argues against recruitment abroad because these professionals would then be missing in their home countries. The party wants to counter the emigration of doctors trained in Germany with internationally competitive pay and good working conditions.

The AfD wants to introduce hygiene rules in health care like those in the Netherlands in order to reduce harm from multi-resistant germs as far as possible. Patients should be tested on admission to a hospital, paid for by the statutory health insurers.

Hospitals have dangerous germs. Many medicines do not work against them. The AfD wants strict hygiene rules like in the Netherlands. Patients should take a test for these germs in the hospital. Public health insurers should pay for the test.

The goal is to bring deaths, amputations and lasting damage from germs such as MRSA down to a minimum. The mandatory tests should take place for both planned and emergency hospital admissions. The statutory health insurers should cover the costs.

The AfD demands that authorities offer protective measures against attacks to ambulance services, emergency rooms and doctors' offices. According to the platform, assaults on staff and patients are increasing.

Doctors and rescue workers are sometimes attacked. The AfD says this happens more and more. The authorities should help protect them. This covers ambulance services, emergency rooms and doctors' offices.

The platform says attacks on medical staff, rescue workers and patients are becoming more frequent and more severe. Doctors in private practice, unlike hospitals, cannot afford a security service. The responsible authorities should therefore offer suitable measures to ward off danger.

The AfD rejects the legalization of cannabis and any social normalization of its use. It points to risks to the brain, especially for young people. It is open to medical use.

The AfD is against legal cannabis. It says cannabis can harm the brain. This is especially true for young people. The AfD accepts cannabis as medicine.

The platform cites studies saying that cannabis use in youth significantly raises the risk of lifelong mental illness such as schizophrenia. Adolescents and young adults, whose brains are still developing, are seen as most at risk. The party is open in principle to medical use, for example in pain therapy.

The AfD calls for a parliamentary committee of inquiry into COVID policy and wants those responsible taken to court where warranted. Comparable restrictions should never happen again. It also rejects the WHO pandemic treaty.

The AfD wants COVID policy to be examined. A committee of inquiry in the state parliament should do this. People responsible could face court. The AfD is also against the WHO pandemic treaty. The WHO is the World Health Organization.

In the platform's view, the COVID measures of the federal and state governments badly damaged the health system and shook trust in doctors. The party criticizes continued promotion of COVID-19 vaccines as one-sided and points to side effects and limited protection. A committee of inquiry is to examine how decisions were made. The goal is that months-long restrictions of fundamental rights of this kind do not recur. The WHO pandemic treaty is rejected because, in the AfD's view, it gives broad powers to a body lacking democratic legitimacy.