STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Swedish hospitals and emergency wards struggled to stay open on Monday as nearly 4,400 health workers went on strike to support nurses who have already stopped work, their union said.

“There are more than 7,000 health care professionals on strike across the country. Every county has been affected,” Anna Nybom Chance, spokeswoman for the Swedish Association of Health Professionals, Vaardfoerbundet, told AFP.

She said the effect of the additional nurses, biomedics and x-ray technicians joining the two-week-old strike was being felt in hospitals, emergency wards, blood banks and medical centres.

The main hospital in Sweden’s third largest city, Malmoe, for instance said two-thirds of the facility had been shut down and that 273 of its patients had been moved elsewhere.

The health care workers are demanding monthly wage increases of 1,700 kronor (182 euros/281 dollars) this year and again in 2009, and that the minimum wage in the sector be raised from 20,000 kronor a month to 22,000.

Vaardfoerbundet, which says its members on average make 24,994 kronor a month, insists current wage levels do not accurately reflect the three years of training it takes to become a nurse.

“Our members are being underestimated,” Nybom Chance said, adding that mediated negotiations would resume on Tuesday.

“It’s very difficult to say how long this will last,” she said.