Cabinet to discuss subsidy for families of patients sent abroad

President Nikos Christodoulides said on Monday evening that cabinet will discuss a plan to subsidise the travel, accommodation, and food expenses for those accompanying people who are sent abroad to receive medical treatment.

In addition, he said, cabinet will discuss the proposal to create a “patient advocate”, with both matters due to be discussed on Wednesday.

Speaking at an event in Larnaca, he said “we have already met with the [health] minister and preparations have been made so that very soon it will go through cabinet.”

He added that he will “personally consider it a success” for the government and for Cyprus at large if the country can reach a point at which “we do not need to send patients abroad.”

He said, “we cannot speak about ourselves as a European state when such a need still exists.”

To this end, he said the government “must take care to have these services in our country.”

Speaking on the matter of the proposed subsidy, he said “we have an obligation as a state to respond and do the minimum we have to do, especially for the health and education sectors, which, for us, cannot be approached through sheer financial data.”

He added, “I consider it our duty as a state to ensure the provision of quality health services and this is what we are trying to do through the support, upgrading, and modernisation of Gesy.”

At the same event, Health Minister Michalis Damianos reported that a total of 1,523 patients had been sent abroad from Cyprus last year.

They were sent to Germany, Israel, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden, and Greece.

“These referrals concern university clinics and reference centres in Germany, [people go] to Israel mainly for neonatal heart surgery and other serious cases and burns, to France and to the UK mainly for liver transplants, and to Belgium, Sweden, and Greece for lung transplants,” Damianos said.

He added that his ministry has “developed a wide and flexible network of collaborations” with leading hospitals across Europe, “which can be activated for the immediate transfer of patients for when these cases cannot be treated in Cyprus.”

He agreed with Christodoulides’ assertion regarding the funding of those travelling with them, saying “the support of patients who go abroad is the responsibility of the state.”

He added, “as a small country, sometimes we do not have the necessary structures for some specialised cases, nor an adequate number of such cases to ensure their effective treatment in Cyprus. However, the state has a duty to offer its citizens the necessary health services, regardless of the structures of Gesy.”