Our View: Recession has highlighted real need for NHS

IT WAS inevitable that the queues and waiting lists at state hospital would grow as a result of the recession. Living standards have fallen dramatically, with the number of long-term unemployed increasing by the day and people in work taking pay cuts. Tens of thousands of people can no longer afford private healthcare and have no choice but to go the state hospitals for treatment even if this involves waiting for hours to be seen.
But state hospitals, health centres and outpatients’ clinics cannot were never designed to cater for so many patients. They have existed to serve old-age pensioners, the poor and public employees, while the rest of the population had to visit private medical practices; some had health insurance, others were entitled to union rates while a small minority paid out of their own pocket. Now, this group has contracted drastically, increasing the number of people seeking care at hospitals.
The Director of Limassol Hospital said the hospital had 329 beds which were always occupied while 1,500 visited the out-patients clinic every day; 700 visited the clinics at the old hospital every day. There were also very long waiting lists for certain specialist doctors in all hospitals and this, according to the new health minister was a very serious problem. The minister said that the waiting lists at Nicosia General Hospital would be tackled by buying services from private clinics, but does the money exist?
Even if it does, the proposed arrangement would simply curb the problem rather than eliminate it. The truth is that the only solution is the introduction of the national health scheme which has been on the cards for the last 20 years but no government has dared to pursue. We have been hearing about the formulation of plans for years but no government has yet dared to go beyond the planning stage.
Successive governments were terrified of undertaking such a big-scale project, fearing it would waste huge amounts of money and eventually fail. There were also different interests to contend with – unions were opposed as they would lose members who relied on the union doctors, public employees were opposed because free healthcare was a right, state doctors feared their numbers would diminish, businesses were reluctant to contribute and so forth.
No government was willing to take on a project that would cause so much trouble. But the recession has highlighted the real need for the introduction of a national health scheme, which was also a recommendation of the troika. President Anastasiades is committed to it and we hope he would not be intimidated by the enormity and complexity of the project as his predecessors were.