In a country in which we have union rule, it is inevitable that a small organised group has become a key player in public health, often dictating policy. Osak, a group of activists, that claims to represent “organised patients” has not only been given a seat on the board of the Health Insurance Organisation, which administers Gesy, but it also has a public say on how the health system should be run, dictating what drugs and treatments should be available to patients.

The activists of Osak have no qualifications or expertise in health care administration but are smart media operators, always getting their message across publicly thanks to their access to all media outlets and particularly the state broadcaster. It is unknown how many patients Osak actually represents – it might not be more than 100 – but it is treated as one of the main stakeholders of Gesy, which must have a say in policy discussions.

Currently, Osak is trying to dictate who must run the ambulance service. They say that “the patients” (code for half a dozen Osak activists) had made it clear to President Nikos Christodoulides that they will not accept the continuation of the existing regime of the ambulance service being under the authority of the state health service Okypy. Nor would they accept the service returning to the ministry of health as this would be a step backwards!

Christodoulides has not done the government any favours by pandering to Osak, which he asked some five months ago to give him proposals on how the ambulance service should be run. By what reasoning he asked a group of activists with no expertise or experience in how ambulance services operate to submit proposals to him, we do not know. Osak submitted proposals – either the creation of a deputy ministry for crises under which the ambulances and the fire brigade would be or the setting up of a “national authority for ambulances” – and now are publicly complaining because the president has not responded to them. The “patients” demand a response.

That the ambulance service is inefficient and slow is not in dispute and the government needs to consider ways of improving response times. But the idea that it should base its decisions on the proposals submitted by Osak, which knows as much about ambulance services as the man on the street, is quite incredible. The president may as well have walked into a café on any high street and asked for advice on how the ambulance service should be organised as café customers know as much about the matter as “organised patients.”

The president must under no circumstances bow to the pressure of Osak, to make the point that organised patients have no legitimacy – let alone the expertise – to dictate how Gesy, the ambulance service and Okypy should operate. It is a point that must be made because we cannot have a group of activists running public health.