It is “inconceivable” for Cyprus to not have university clinics operating as part of its health system, Diko MP Chrysanthos Savvides said on Thursday.

Addressing the day’s session of the House health committee, he said Cyprus, as a “modern European state”, should allow university clinics to operate, and described the bill before the committee, which, if passed, will pave the way for their opening, as “serious”.

The bill as it currently stands foresees the legalisation of university clinics, which would be certified by a three-member evaluation committee appointed by the health minister of the day.

Clinics would be attached to hospitals and managed by a “head university physician”.

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The day’s session also touched on a new bill regarding the operation of imaging centres, which committee chairman and Disy MP Efthymios Diplaros said he hopes will “protect” them.

He said the new bill will “regulate the operation of everything we know, whether MRI or anything else”, and that on this front, there is a “positive climate” among committee members, with the hope that it will progress quickly through the committee and to a plenary session of the House.

On the content of the bill itself, he said that “we will now have to scientifically secure the safety of patients, so that they know where they are going, what they are doing, and who is monitoring all the tests and their results”.

“At the same time, the units which are operating will be secured so that there is control over their machines and the procedures they follow, based on doctors and radiologists, but also the very important role of the technicians who will be present during these tests,” he said.

However, Akel MP Nikos Kettiros said he has “serious reservations” on some points of the bill and added that as far as his party is concerned, “there is nothing agreed on our part unless everything is agreed”.

“These points will be looked at by our parliamentary group, because from what we have understood, many of the points also concern financial interests, and that is why we must be very careful. No one and no interest should come before the health of our fellow people,” he said.

Edek MP Marinos Sizopoulos, meanwhile, said the bill on imaging centres is “very important” as the centres constitute “a vital sector of the medical services provided, both in terms of prevention and in terms of the quality of the services offered”.

“It is for this reason that this bill must be able, through the details it will determine, to protect the safety of people and upgrade the quality of the services offered,” he said, before warning against “the risk of creating oligopolies” of service providers.