Online medical cards?

Sir,
Some readers may not be aware that the old E111 form giving some medical assistance reassurance when travelling away from home has been replaced by a plastic card (EHIC). This card, unlike the E111 form offers a permanent facility within the EU instead of needing to acquire a separate E111 covering specific dates every time one may be away from a home base.

 In the UK and most of the EU the EHIC can be obtained by application online and is delivered within three days.  This is not the case in Cyprus.  The Department of Health advises that an application for the card must be made either to the local General Hospital, where after handing in the application an unspecified period must pass before collection, or direct to the Ministry, allowing 10 days before the intended date of travel. 

In practice, in my experience, an application to the Ministry  took over three weeks before the card’s arrival, and part of this was because it took at least a week for the Post Office to get it from Nicosia to Paphos.

In view of the workload on local hospitals, and the Ministry of Health, coupled with an inordinately slow postal service, would it to some useful extent help everyone if an online application could be set up?

Clive Turner, Kamares, Tala

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.