Was hospital lab equipment destroyed on purpose?

THE SIMULTANEOUS breakdown of two blood analysis machines at Limassol hospital may or may not have been coincidence, Health Minister Christos Patsalides said yesterday during a visit there.

“These things can no longer go unnoticed. While the incident may have been coincidental, it may also not have been so. We must finally realise that such things are checked and investigated because we can no longer tolerate the situation where ‘this breaks’ and then ‘that breaks’ and all we do is run to pay for the damage,” Patsalides said. He has ordered an investigation.

During his visit Patsalides was briefed by hospital director Chrysostomos Andronikou on the conditions under which the lab equipment malfunctioned at the same time during the Christmas holidays, causing considerable hardship to patients as doctors could not make informed diagnoses without blood results.

As a temporary solution, patients were referred to hospitals in other districts. Both machines have now been repaired, the first in the last week and the second on Thursday. Nevertheless, the question of why both machines went out of order at the same time remains.

“We must investigate whether individual interests are behind the incident and whether hospital staff purposely caused the machine malfunction so that the service would be subcontracted to the private sector,” said Patsalides.

DIKO MP Athena Kyriakidou welcomed the Minister’s pledge. “It has been a week from hell for Limassol General, as it also suffers from infrastructure and organisational deficiencies,” said Kyriakidou.

“I hope these suspicions are investigated and solved so that we can see if there has been corruption and whether private interests are being served.”

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