Greece’s health minister has sparked a backlash over the state of the country’s health system after praising the treatment of a “half-dead” New Zealand billionaire at a public hospital in Athens.
Adonis Georgiadis this week said the man had been refused care by his private insurance because of the seriousness of his injuries after a reported quad bike crash Wednesday on the island of Mykonos.
Media reports identified the victim as Tom Greenwood, founder of the real-time payment firm Volt.
“He is very badly hurt,” Georgiadis told Skai TV. “The Greek public health system did what one of the biggest private insurance companies on earth could not.”
But late Thursday, staff at the Nikaia hospital where Greenwood was airlifted for emergency treatment countered that they were witnessing daily fatalities “which could have been saved” if the state ambulance service was not so “understaffed”.
Also on Thursday, the health ministry revealed that it took over 20 minutes for an ambulance to reach a beach in northern Halkidiki peninsula where a senior conservative politician, Apostolos Vesyropoulos, had suffered a heart attack.
The 59-year-old later died in hospital.
Greek health unions have repeatedly warned that a chronic lack of funding in state hospitals and health centres is putting tremendous strain on staff and endangering lives.
Earlier in August, the 34-year-old daughter of former prime minister Antonis Samaras died following a reported seizure.
The Athens hospital where she was first taken, Sismanogleio, could not decisively address the problem and requested a transfer.
In October, a dozen doctors in the northeastern city of Drama threatened to resign to draw attention to staffing shortages.
And in January, four people were hurt in an elevator cabin fall at a Hellenic Red Cross hospital in Athens.
Georgiadis has rejected criticism of the health system, which sustained massive spending cuts following the country’s 2010 debt crisis.
On Thursday, he hit out at a Eurostat survey which found that nearly 22 percent of Greeks had medical needs that were not addressed, the highest share by far in the European Union, where the average rate is 3.6 percent, the agency said.
“This is an opinion poll… it’s completely wrong,” Georgiadis said.
He added that among around 3,000 public health users who responded to an evaluation campaign promoted by the government in July, 75 percent said they were satisfied with their treatment.
Source: AFP
