The new wing of the “Mamatseios” hospital in Kozani, under construction, was visited today, the first stop of his two-day tour in Western Macedonia, by the Minister of Health, Adonis Georgiadis.

Mr. Georgiadis he was informed by the commander of the hospital, Dimitris Siolos, and the commander of the 3rd Ministry of Health, Panagiotis Boyatzidis, about the building facilities of the new wing of the hospital, which was financed by the NSRF with €13.5 million, while he also saw up close the work being done to modernize the Emergency department Incidents (TEP), a project that has been included and is financed by the Recovery Fund.

The Minister held a meeting with the director of the ICU, Kostantinos Stokos, to whom he expressed his thanks for dealing with the incident of a 13-year-old boy who accidentally swallowed car antifreeze (paraflu) and was saved thanks to the quick and effective actions of the ICU doctors and the doctors of the Pathology Department hospital clinic.

“I want to congratulate the staff of the hospital and the ICU for the efforts they made to save the 13-year-old child, an incident that worried all of Greece but in the end it went very well” stressed Mr. Georgiadis and added that “the hospital in the next period will be strengthened with additional staff for its better operation”.

In relation to which of the two hospitals of Kozani and Ptolemaida will have priority in Western Macedonia, in the meeting that followed with the health agencies in the Region of Western Macedonia, Mr. Georgiadis said that “the Kozani hospital is being upgraded even more with the investments in its building infrastructure” however he clarified that Bodosakeio Ptolemaida due to its location, the infrastructure it has in addition to being a reference hospital could in the future become “the tertiary nursing institution of the Region» since Western Macedonia does not have one so far and cases requiring medical attention are treated at the respective university hospitals of Thessaloniki and Ioannina.

With regard to the new health map, Mr. Georgiadis clarified “he does not wish to leave it pending for the next few years, that the proposal we will arrive at also concerns your region should have the consent of the region”. He stated that he will be cooperative and open to the proposal of the health map prepared by the Region of Western Macedonia, clarifying that “the local communities are interested in the solution of the problem but have micro-local perceptions».

He noted that “having residents flee to other regions to find solutions to their medical problems is not a good idea” and pointed out that the West Macedonia Region has a high percentage of citizens traveling to neighboring counties for medical reasons. He asked whether “we will face this reality with courage or continue to perpetuate it”.

600 EKAV rescue positions and 250 new ambulances are coming

During the meeting with the health authorities, the Minister, responding to the position of the representative of the Pharmaceutical Association of Kozani on the issue of generic drugs, emphasized that “Greece, although it has a strong pharmaceutical industry that produces generics, has the smallest percentages of them in its internal market. And that is something that is not good.” In the call made by the representatives of the microbiological laboratories to find an immediate solution to the financial suffocation experienced by their laboratories on the occasion of the operation of Claw back, he emphasized that the government took some extreme measures such as “the introduction of one and three euros in exams, the diagnostic protocols and the establishment of the individual Claw back».

In response to the appeals of the representative of the workers at EKAV of Western Macedonia for staff recruitment and a new fleet of ambulances, Mr. Georgiadis stated that in the next period “600 EKAV rescue positions will be advertised and 250 ambulances will be purchased from the Recovery Fund”.

Finally, answering the question on whether the government is thinking of proceeding with normalization solutions concerning the different salary scales of doctors who serve with various employment relationships within the NHS, Mr. Georgiadis emphasized that “it is not an easy matter and that it is not the responsibility of the Ministry of Health alone”.