THE PUBLIC health sector is in a shambles, according to the House Health Committee, and they have asked the government to act upon it.
The matter was highlighted after deputies visited Limassol Hospital earlier this week and described the situation as “chaotic”.
In a written statement, DISY deputy Christos Pourgourides claimed the public health sector was “on the verge of collapse” and suggested that “anyone sitting behind a desk at the Ministry of Health should visit the hospital and see things for themselves”.
According to Pourgourides, doctors and nursing staff are expected to work under terrible conditions, while hundreds of patients arrive at the outpatients’ clinics early in the morning and have to wait five to six hours to see a doctor.
In some cases, deputies observed that patients were getting so impatient and stressed that they were taking it out on the nursing staff and doctors.
Pourgourides also reported that there were long queues of patients awaiting surgery, while there were patients waiting for hours in the emergency room.
Finally, Pourgourides said that doctors at the outpatients’ clinics were expected to examine more than 50 patients a day when they should only be examining 30, following strict instructions from the Ministry of Health.
But the Chief Medical Official of the Limassol Hospital, Dr Andreas Petevis, says the Ministry gave no clear instructions over the amount of patients doctors are allowed to examine a day. “We can’t turn patients away even if we were only allowed 30 patients a day. It’s a double-edged sword,” he told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.
Petevis says the whole thing has been blown out of proportion and that the matter is clearly political. “There is a work overload, but the deputies are overreacting. I don’t like to comment on political matters,” he said.
But Pourgourides was yesterday emphatic that conditions needed to be changed, not just in Limassol, but also all over Cyprus. “The public is fed up with promises from the government and it’s about time matters concerning health are attended to and solutions are found, because no government in Europe can play games with the health of the people,” he said.
He was also keen to congratulate doctors on the mammoth workload they have taken on and expressed the hope that the problem would soon be solved, for the sake of the doctors and the public.
Minister of Health Andreas Gavrielides was unable to comment yesterday as he was abroad and in meetings throughout the day.
