Cyprus to have a national health system by the end of 2011

THE HEALTH Ministry plans to introduce the island’s national health system in the second half of 2011, lawmakers heard yesterday.

According to the Ministry’s budget report for 2010, submitted before parliament yesterday, the scheme will be introduced in the second half of 2011 with services provided to external patients.

Health care provision to inpatients is scheduled between six and 12 months later.

For 2010 the ministry has allocated around €5.6 million to prepare for the implementation of the scheme.

The current public health system, established during the colonial period, is generally regarded as having failed to keep pace with the realities of a modern healthcare system required to serve a growing and ageing population.

Given the common perception that the most up-to-date medical treatment can only be provided on demand by the private healthcare sector domestically and abroad, the public system tends to be used predominantly by civil servants and their dependants, pensioners and low-income patients who cannot afford the private option.

The political decision was therefore taken some ten years ago to carry out a fundamental reform of the existing system, with the aim of creating an equitable and genuinely universal primary healthcare system which would be economically viable and would guarantee the provision of the highest possible quality of service.

The ministry’s total budget for 2010 is €644,636,335, a 4.69 per cent increase from 2009.

According to the chairman of the House Finance Committee Nicolas Papadopoulos, the increase in the budget is mainly due to the increase in “administrative expenses” by some €25 million.

These are the increases in the ministry’s payroll, which are expected to reach 13.2 per cent next year.

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.