Cupboard on Wednesday accredited a plan to cowl the journey, lodging and meals bills of 1 member of the family who accompanies a affected person despatched overseas to obtain medical remedy.
Talking after the cupboard assembly, Well being Minister Michalis Damianos expressed his satisfaction with the plan’s approval, saying the request for such bills to be lined by the federal government is “honest”.
He defined that the federal government will cowl bills for a member of the family of all sufferers despatched overseas whose annual family earnings doesn’t exceed €100,000, in addition to all minor sufferers despatched overseas no matter family earnings.
The coverage will formally come into impact subsequent Tuesday and is anticipated to value the federal government €4.5 million per yr.
President Nikos Christodoulides had stated on Monday that “we’ve got an obligation as a state to reply and do the minimal we’ve got to do, particularly for the well being and schooling sectors, which, for us, can’t be approached by means of sheer monetary knowledge.”
A complete of 1,523 sufferers had been despatched overseas from Cyprus for remedy final yr. They had been despatched to Germany, Israel, France, the UK, Belgium, Sweden, and Greece.
Damianos defined on Monday that “These referrals concern college clinics and reference centres in Germany, [people go] to Israel primarily for neonatal coronary heart surgical procedure and different critical instances and burns, to France and to the UK primarily for liver transplants, and to Belgium, Sweden, and Greece for lung transplants.”
He added that his ministry has “developed a large and versatile community of collaborations” with main hospitals throughout Europe, “which may be activated for the instant switch of sufferers for when these instances can’t be handled in Cyprus”.
“As a small nation, typically we don’t have the required constructions for some specialised instances, nor an enough variety of such instances to make sure their efficient remedy in Cyprus. Nevertheless, the state has an obligation to supply its residents the required well being providers, whatever the constructions of Gesy.”
