An open letter to the health minister

Dear Dr. Petrides,

Cyprus Strategic Plan for Alzheimer’s Disease: How long before action will be taken?

Having sent you an email about the above plan to your designated MOH email address and not hearing from you, I felt obliged to ask you publicly for a response.

The recent publication on Amazon of my e-book, A Mental State, has prompted me to approach you about two main issues:

Firstly, The Strategic Plan for Alzheimer’s Disease, launched with much fanfare in 2010 by your predecessor, Dr. Patsalides, seems to have sunk without trace. At best, only point 4 of the Plan (voluntary sector) seems to be operating i.e. the state is expecting this sector to do all its work for it (Points 1 to 3 of the Plan) and without the state’s resources. Only the state can provide clinical resources for dementia, even if contracted out; only the state can establish clinical and managerial protocols and standards in hospitals; only the state can monitor, audit, review and correct clinical and managerial practices in hospitals.

Secondly, the culture of abandonment and a corrupted spirit within the Cypriot health sector was so evident in the way that my mother, Thraki Rossidou Jones, was treated when she developed dementia. My wife and I were treated as ‘enemies of the state’ for daring to protect her. The final calumny was her death by asphyxiation at the local hospital, a scene we witnessed first-hand. So far nobody has been held to account and the public hospital claims to have ‘lost’ the medical notes. To add insult to injury, the civil action we launched in November 2009 has been dogged by multiple postponements and general judicial foot-dragging.

I do not apologize for what I deem to be my justifiable anger and frustration and my book’s contributing author, Dr. Alan Waring, and I believe that it’s vital for health care systems to be in place to ensure that experiences such as ours do not occur again. There’s no room for complacency even in the most developed of countries. We have been heartened by the positive response of the e-book from members of the public, clinicians and dementia organizations worldwide. It is now time to push for implementation of the first 3 points of the Strategic Plan. I’m encouraged by the public statements of the new President that all public officials shall adopt a governance code based on honesty, integrity and transparency. Taking this to its logical conclusion, the present negative culture should therefore start to change for the better. However, talk is cheap. Therefore, Mr. Minister, how long will it take you to even begin to initiate change and implement the Strategic Plan for Alzheimer’s?

Yours sincerely,

Gavin Jones, Paphos

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.