Nurses’ union Pasyno on Monday spoke of “miserable conditions” in which nurses are expected to work, in the aftermath of floods which hit the Paphos general hospital on Saturday evening.

“We live every day in miserable working conditions, in understaffed hospitals, with serious shortages, and now we are also having to live with inadequate buildings,” they said.

They criticised “great weakness” on the part of the state health services’ organisation (Okypy), and said the health ministry is “having to run after them to correct what they themselves should have foreseen and managed in time”.

“What patients, nurses, and the rest of the staff who were working on Saturday night at the Paphos general hospital went through is unprecedented. No one comes out of that looking good, especially those who are responsible for operating Okypy’s hospitals,” they said.

With this in mind, they added that the issue of the “unsuitability” of the hospital building has been being raised “for months”, and that those administering the hospital knew it was inadequate.

“Saturday’s incident was simply the straw which broke the camel’s back,” they said.
They then called on Okypy to “proceed with immediate solutions to repair the damage” and also called on the health ministry to “intervene and make people take responsibility, when and where necessary”.

“Fortunately, this time we were lucky once again. The next one might be fatal for our staff as well as for our patients,” they said.

To this end, they also said they “want to give our congratulations to the nurses who were on duty” at the Paphos general hospital at the time.

“They selflessly responded to face this crisis,” they added.

Paphos general hospital was operating as usual on Monday following the flood damage to the thalassemia ward and the cardiology lab over the weekend.
Health Minister Michalis Damianos assured the public that no patients were affected.

Pasyno’s statement comes after Paphos mayor Phedonas Phedonos had on Sunday said the hospital was “built with a lot of shoddy work”.

“No one ever got serious about it, to plan a serious renovation project, to identify the problems or to fix them,” he said, adding that the building is “scrappy” and that there have been previous instances of ceilings leaking during rain.

“A lot of buildings are 35 years old and do not have problems like this,” he said, before adding that his municipality has been warning of the hospital’s condition for “about five years”.

“Especially now with Gesy, it is convenient for some people that the state hospitals do not function properly, so that others benefit,” he added.

“In general there is a terrible inefficiency inside the state and within successive governments regarding these matters. If the rain had carried on for longer yesterday, all the floors would have flooded and the hospital would have become a lake,” he said.