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PERAMA, Greece — The shipyards are deserted in this town just west of Piraeus, Greece’s main port, and unemployment hovers at 60 percent. The country is at the edge of bankruptcy, and with more government spending cuts looming, newly impoverished Greeks are turning to charity for health care, medicines and food.

The Greek branch of Doctors of the World, a French-founded relief group renowned for aiding war victims and impoverished immigrants, now has a clinic in Perama, where 80 or more people line up three days a week. To cope with demand, the group plans to operate the clinic seven days a week.

Panagiotis Alexius has been coming in for free medicines and a dosage of oxygen since the clinic opened in February 2010. For 40 years he worked in the nearby shipyards, or abroad, spraying a toxic mix of chemicals and sand on ship hulls. Disabled by a rare lung disease in 2002, he received disability payments. But he’s now fallen through Greece’s safety net: He is officially assessed as 67 percent disabled, but the threshold for government support has been raised to 80 percent.

Because of an unpaid tax bill from 10 years ago, Alexius is barred from receiving government-paid health services.

“Greece is a total mess on these issues,” he told a visiting reporter. “I searched for help at the ministry, but it was difficult to figure out what is going on.”

His six children, only two of whom are employed, help pay his electricity and food bills.

As Greece’s political leaders struggle to reach an agreement with international lenders before a March 30 deadline, the toll is growing from an austerity program that promises only to get tougher. Greece has been living beyond its means for decades, and now the little man is paying the price.

Professionals who do vital government jobs are in dire straits, with take-home salaries now cut to as low as $860 a month, or $10,300 a year. The private sector, too, is about to feel the squeeze. Earlier this week, political leaders agreed in principle to cut the minimum monthly wage in the private sector to $750 from $1,000.

Optimism is in short supply, both among the country’s leading economics experts and at the volunteer doctors clinic in Perama.

According to Dr. Nikitas Kanakis, the dentist who’s president of the Greek branch of Doctors of the World, the number of patients coming through the door of the group’s Perama clinic has quadrupled in the past two years. Eight in 10 patients now are Greeks, four times what it had been.

“It’s a shocking time,” he told McClatchy Newspapers. “The state doesn’t know who’s poor or who’s vulnerable. People used to be able to get money and find a doctor. Now everything is breaking down.”
Many who seek help at the clinic have incomes of no more than $260 a month, and others have nothing at all, he said.

The doctors group has been handing out 45-pound food parcels to families since December — 4,000 around the country, 1,000 in Perama alone.

“I think we are the sole support for at least 300 families here,” he said.

All medicines are donated. When a new cancer patient arrives, Kanakis issues a community appeal, and locals donate their leftover pills. “It’s a Greek thing,” he said of the practice, something not seen even in most war zones.