With the positive vote from the ND was also voted on the Authority the plan of the Ministry of Health for “Settings to deal with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, strengthening the protection of public health and health services, the electronic system for monitoring the circulation of medicines, the Unified List of Surgeries and other urgent provisions” to the Social Affairs Committee.

The draft law on the Authority SYRIZA and KKE voted against, while PASOK-KINAL. Hellenic Solution, Spartans, Victory and Freedom Sailing were reserved to be placed in the Plenary.

In the afternoon, the debate on the articles of the bill was completed in the Committee. Tomorrow morning, its second reading is set to take place, so that on Wednesday, as planned by the Council of Ministers, it will be introduced for discussion and voting in the Plenary.

Earlier, during the hearing of bodies, the president of the Hellenic Surgical Society Georgios Zografos regarding the provision of the creation of the single list of surgeries, he described it as positive, as “the system so far has not helped to record the reality”. He pointed out, however, that “in the single list, it should clearly have some separation, it cannot be completely uniform for everyone, it must have branches. He proposed “to consider a collaboration between the public and the private sector, so that where there is a large overcrowding for benign diseases and for operations of minor and medium severity, these can be performed by doctors from the National Health System or the University, since the University belongs to the National Health System at the level of hospitals in private institutions, but without any charge for the patient. In other words, it should be an agreement between the state and the Ministry with these clinics”.

The president of the Panhellenic Federation of Public Hospital Employees Michalis Giannakos stated that “the renewal of the healthcare contracts is a positive step as they cover permanent and lasting needs, if the appropriate thing would be to convert their contracts into an indefinite period as was the relevant commitment of the Ministry of Health during the pandemic”. He emphasized that there are large staff shortages and estimated that we may not “be able to make it through the winter with this composition of staff given that there will be an outbreak of infections” considering that “we will also develop ranches and pathological and pulmonary cases will be hospitalized in other clinics resulting in increased nosocomial infections and operating theater lists will increase.” He agreed with the single operating theater list, as he said “a lot of hospitals haven’t touched the operating theater lists since 2015 and patients are showing up there that no one knows what happened to. But, in order to be able to not have waiting lists, three years and more, all the operating theaters of the hospitals will have to work”. Among other things, he described as positive the Minister’s announcement that “cleaning and guarding contracts in hospitals will stop. He asked for the recruitment of all the health workers who came to replace the vaccinators who were put out of the system.

The president of the Federation of Associations of Hospital Doctors of Greece Aphrodite Reziou he disagreed with the renewals of the contracts saying that “these are not some emergency needs” and permanent recruitments are needed. The policy of renewals, he said, “comes to consolidate the policy of movements, intensification, work hostages, the utilization of private doctors and retirees, instead of hiring permanent doctors” He disagreed with the provision of the possibility of exceeding 48 hours because at its core is the abolition of fixed daily working hours. For the single surgery list, he estimated that it will not solve the problems, as the causes are the lack of anesthesiologists, surgeons, ICU doctors, and nurses to operate more surgical beds.

The president of the Panhellenic Trade Union Federation of Nursing Staff Giorgos Tsolas disagreed with the provision of extending the possibility of exceeding the 48-hour work saying that “it is undoubtedly a highly dangerous and unsafe practice, both for the workers themselves and for public health and by extension for the recipients”. For the extension of the stay of the specialized nurses who were created during the pandemic, he asked “as a minimum act of recognition, that their contracts be made permanent and not extended month by month. He emphasized that the Federation insists on hiring permanent staff across the spectrum of health care and welfare. He pointed out that “we should produce more nurses in our schools and incentives should be given to choose the nursing profession and stay in Greece”.

The General Secretary of the Panhellenic Pharmaceutical Association Emmanuel Katsarakis he agreed with the extension of the validity of regulations to deal with the pandemic and especially the extension of the validity of prescriptions, arguing that “we cannot return to a five-day execution regime, as provided for by the electronic prescription law”. Regarding the article regarding the Electronic Drug Monitoring and Trafficking System, he said that “it is in the right direction. The system should take all the data of stocks and pharmacies and companies. It has to take into account the quantities of drugs that are moved by the companies to the drugstores and to the pharmacies in real time, so that we have safe conclusions.”

Anastasios Samouilidis, Public Relations Officer of the Hellenic Patients’ Association, requested, due to the winter increase in coronavirus cases, that there should also be care for our immunocompromised fellow citizens who for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated, so their protection should be ensured both with preventive measures and with any pharmaceutical interventions . He described the creation of a single list of surgeries as a positive development, although he assessed that “it will not solve the problem of long patient waits for surgeries, as long as there are not enough staff, the operating theaters are not fully functional and there are no anesthetists, surgeons, nursing staff and adequacy of materials”. He asked for the extension of the distribution of medicines, while for the Authority of Assisted Reproduction, he asked for the expansion of the composition to include other social partners, such as patients and beneficiaries.

THE president of the Panhellenic Federation of Associations – Associations of People with Diabetes Christos Daramilas requested participation in the Drug Shortage Monitoring Committee. Regarding the single list of surgeries, he observed that “there is no provision for prioritizing people with chronic diseases and disabilities”.

THE Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Association of Parents of Children with Neoplastic Disease – “Flame” Georgia Kokkinou he focused on the provision for the monitoring of the drug, with which, as he said, “we are in agreement and we consider it a very important step, because there are deficiencies. And in fact, recently, there were also shortages in basic chemotherapy preparations that we use in children.” For the Registry of Neoplasms, he requested that it be separate for children as, as he pointed out, “cancer in children is another disease, it has other causes, it has other needs, it needs different monitoring and at an epidemiological level, so that we can have safe conclusions”.