IT IS often said that some projects should not be viewed from an accountant’s perspective because their value to society cannot be calculated only in money terms. For instance the Cyprus University may be costing the taxpayer a little less than €100 million a year, but it could be argued that a state university is a necessity and that its benefits to society, in the longer term, would far outweigh the high cost.
However it is very difficult to take this view of the government’s plans to set up a Medical School as well. This would be a complex and expensive project, the benefits of which would be very difficult to justify when put against costs. Initial setting up costs would amount to €47 million, while annual operating costs once it opens to students are estimated to be in the region of €13 million. This is a very modest estimate and is certain to be exceeded.
But leaving the prohibitive costs aside has anyone considered how many clinical specialities the Medical School would be able to offer? And would students acquire the level of specialisation they could acquire in the medical schools and hospitals of much bigger countries that have a much bigger variety of cases to study than they would in a country of less than a million people? What sort of consultants would we be producing and at what a cost?
This is not to say we cannot produce good doctors – there are many Cypriots who have made a name for themselves as leading experts in hospitals abroad – but in Cyprus, because of the smallness of the country and the low number of cases they see, the scope for real specialisation is very limited if not non-existent. This is why it is difficult not to laugh when we hear politicians talking about Cyprus becoming a regional medical centre. No Cypriot doctor could make a name for himself as a respected consultant by working in such a small country.
It is almost as absurd as the idea of setting up an organ transplant centre at Nicosia General Hospital that was recently being peddled by the health minister. He announced that once the centre was set up (he did not set a time-frame) it would carry out liver and heart transplants. He had not thought about shortage of donors in a population of under a million. Would we be paying surgeons to carry out a dozen transplants a year and set up special facilities to support the enterprise?
It appears that as much thought was put into the idea of the Medical School as had been put into the minister’s transplant centre pipe dream. However the taxpayer has already started paying for the Medical School which seems destined to cost huge amounts of money every year and offer very little to our society in return.
