CANCER PATIENTS were reeling yesterday by the revelation that one of the wards at the Bank of Cyprus Oncology Centre could close.
The President of the Bank of Cyprus (BoC) Oncology Centre in Nicosia, Androulla Vassiliou told the Parliamentary Health Committee meeting the ward could close down because nurses at the ward have applied for state jobs because of the higher salaries on offer.
Cancer patients were left out in the cold last year when it was announced that the oncology centre at Nicosia General Hospital would lose. Since the announcement, the Committee of Cancer Patients and Relatives of the Oncology Centre claim that careless treatment and needless cutback have led to the premature deaths of several cancer patients.
Vassiliou warned that the situation has reached a critical stage and that the centre will not be able to offer the service needed to treat all the cancer patients if indeed half the nurses believed to have applied for the state jobs, leave. She added that the repercussions of such a move from the nurses would result in one of the two wards closing down. One ward at the Oncology Centre holds sixteen beds.
The talks later heated up when one of the members questioned representatives of the Oncology Centre why they could not match the state’s wage offers. One representative of the Oncology Centre replied that it was the state that paid the salaries of the employees.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail yesterday, BoC Oncology Centre chief executive Alecos Stamatis said that efforts are still underway to solve the problem of nurses being lured away to more lucrative jobs.
“The matter is being discussed at the parliament at present but we hope that the situation won’t reach that point. We are in continuous contact with the Parliamentary Health Committee trying to find a way to solve the problem. However when you have a clinic with 50 to 60 nurses, you can imagine what will happen if half of them decide to leave to go and work elsewhere.”
Asked if whether he believed the government or the Ministry of Health was doing enough to tackle the current saga involving the cancer patients, Stamatis replied, “Unfortunately when you are dealing with serious illnesses like cancer, there is no quick solution.
“It needs planning and planning needs time. The real issue should be to find ways to avoid, in some cases, getting the illnesses and that should also be looked into.”
