DISY hospital visit an unacceptable act and attempt to impress the public

Statement by the General Secretary of the C.C. of AKEL on DISY visit to a public hospital

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 31st March 2020, Nicosia

We would like to express our intense dissatisfaction over what occurred today with the visit of ruling DISY party to a public hospital. We consider this action attempts to impress public opinion and at the same time puts all those whom DISY President supposedly went to thank in danger.

I would like to make it clear that we all express our gratitude towards health workers who are risking their lives trying to offer as much services as possible to our compatriots facing dangerous conditions.

However, what DISY did happened at a time when patients are being referred to anywhere else but public hospitals; when patients’ relatives are not allowed to visit them in hospitals; when we all know extremely well the many difficult times public hospitals are going through. Furthermore, we all know very well that today all efforts are focused on public hospitals operating together with the private sector to protect us from a dangerous virus. So DISY chose this very moment to attempt to impress public opinion. This was an unacceptable action.

Even more unacceptable, however, is the action of the State Health Services Organisation (OKYPY), which not only permitted this visit, but posted excerpts from DISY’s visit on its website.

AKEL had always organised as a custom visits to the public hospitals once or twice a year. However, we clearly state that we will avoid visiting them during this specific period because we want to protect health workers and not attempt to impress public opinion by going there to congratulate them. I repeat that we don’t just congratulate them and don’t merely thank them for all the work they are doing right now. We thank them for all the work they have always been doing over time. But most important of all, we try to support them through measures we submit that will equip and give them every possibility to carry out their job without risking their lives.