Resist the policies transforming the right to health and life into a privilege or even a luxury for the select few!

Press Conference by Andros Kyprianou, General Secretary of the C.C. of AKEL on the issue of Health

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 12^th May 2016, Nicosia

Health is a public good which a State has an obligation to provide for its citizens. For a modern State, the way Health care and the Health sector are addressed reflects the level of social justice and culture of a society. The provision of health must be provided on the basis of a comprehensive social planning. This implies:

• Universal and equal access to health services
• High level of quality health care service quality for all
• Dignified treatment of patients;
• Social justice and solidarity in financing.
• The public sector must play a pivotal role in providing health services. Support for public hospitals which should form the backbone of the General Health Scheme (GHS).

Proposals:

• Immediate tabling and voting of the modernizing legislative framework for the implementation of the GHS as it had been planned and approved unanimously in 2001 with broad social consensus.
• Independence of the Health Insurance Organization (HIO) in order to ensure good administration, separation of powers and protection from political interference in the management of the fund and from phenomena of non-transparency and corruption.
• Restoration of funding for Health to least the levels that the government inherited, excluding the fund for sending patients abroad. The charges collected from payments at public hospitals and civil servants contributions should be invested back into the public health sector.
• Creation of a strong and independent department at the Ministry of Health, under which all state hospitals will be integrated into and with each one of them having full economic self-management.
• Reorganization of public hospitals (administrative, financial and scientific) and full autonomy in decision making.
• Implementation of a structure in hospitals, opening up job positions, restoring temporary staff and immediate filling of all vacant posts.
• Provision of new approved, specialist pharmaceutical products based on modern, scientific protocols.
• Creation of new clinics – neurology, rheumatology, infectious illnesses, intensive care units in all hospitals, trauma, Neuroradiology, interventional radiology, creation of radio-therapeutic stations at the General Hospital of Nicosia and Limassol. Creation of a full Transplant centre.
• Implementation of immediate measures to reduce waiting lists such as: incidents should be classified according to their degree of priority, regular updating of lists, and creation of a centralized electronic waiting lists system Regular review of patients by their doctors.
• Clinical pharmacists in hospitals.
• Implementation of a comprehensive education policy for health professionals. Introduction of the institution of research in hospitals.
• Strengthening of control mechanisms – internal and external – to enhance sound administration, but also to avoid irregularities.

The Left has the responsibility and obligation to resist the policies that are transforming the right to health and life into a privilege or even a luxury for the privileged few.

We have an obligation to protect the human right to health and medical care.