THE LACK of dialysis facilities, coupled with a growing number of people with kidney disease is so bad that many patients are on the machines sometimes until 2am, the House Human Rights Committee heard yesterday,
Committee chairman Sophocles Fyttis said 95 per cent of dialysis patients could not work as they must spend four hours at a time three days a week on a machine.
“They cannot work and many are too poor to sustain themselves,” he said. At the same time, the number of people needing dialysis was growing at the rate of 30 per cent a year while facilities had not been expanded at all to accommodate the change.
From 150 patients seven years ago, the number of dialysis patients now stands at 450, some 170 of whom are in Nicosia and receiving dialysis at the Nicosia General Hospital, which only has the capacity to accommodate a total of 80 patients comfortably.
“The medical staff are trying but space is insufficient,” he said.
EDEK deputy Roulla Mavronicola patients rights were being violated in a country that wants to be considered well governed.
“Regardless of the economic crisis…we should try to solve at least the problems of basic survival,” she said. “It is unthinkable today, in 2011, that patients are leaving the hospital at two o clock in the morning to go home.”
This is also an added expense for the unemployed patients as they must use taxis at that hour, she said. There was no state support mechanism for this, Mavronicola said.
The other issue, she said was that although there has been progress in other areas of medicine with the development of new treatments for kidney disease, Cyprus was still using dialysis. Some of the new drugs were not available at the hospitals, she said.
Mavronicola also said that some private hospitals had dialysis machines but the state had not even bothered to buy services from them to alleviate pressure on the hospital.
DISY MP Stella Kyriakides said that the rights of patients on dialysis were protected by the European Charter and included the right to private and home care, and for the rights that would allow them to work in both the public and private sector.
AKEL MP Skevi Koukouma suggested that a public awareness campaign be launched about organ donation, which might result in more patients receiving a transplant.
Fyttis said that following what was revealed at the yesterday’s meeting, members of the committee would go on a fact finding visit to the hospital in 15 days to talk to staff and patients and determine what needed to be done.