Government plays down U-turn on cancer care

THE government has decided to transfer the oncological centre currently located in the old Nicosia General hospital to the new one, a decision that has pleased the cancer patients and relatives union (ELAZO), which has been fighting for years for an oncological ward in the new Nicosia General Hospital.

Last Friday, the Permanent Secretary of the Health Ministry, Soteris Soterious, sent a letter to ELAZO Chairman Christos Andreou that “it had been decided that there would be an oncology ward operating at the New General Hospital in Nicosia.”
Health Minister Andreas Gavrielides told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that the ward did not open earlier even though there were designs in place for it because there were “certain agreements with the present [Bank of Cyprus] oncological centre.”
“All this, however, has passed and we say that we have to provide care and accommodation for the cancer patients.”

The Health Minister noted that they were “not building a new building”, but rather only transferring “all the same services that are now in the old General hospital to the new one.”

Head of the Bank of Cyprus Oncology Centre welcomed the decision by the government to open an oncology ward at the New General Hospital in Nicosia despite the fact that it could potentially lure away their staff.

“The risk of losing staff is there, and it’s not restricted to nursing,” Stamatis said. “Government jobs are lucrative and retaining staff has been a major issue.

“It has always been our belief that there should be oncology services at all possible services,” he said, adding that the concentration of all oncology services in one town or hospital is “not desirable either from the provider’s point of view or the patient’s.”
ELAZO Chairman Andreou felt that the sudden announcement by the government to transfer the oncological facilities despite repeated past refusals to open a ward in the new hospital was due to their campaigning and efforts.

“We told them that if they don’t give us an oncological ward in the new Nicosia General Hospital then we would occupy the other ward and not leave until we were arrested,” Andreou told the Cyprus Mail.

“We also said we would condemn them to the European Court.”

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.