Public health is above PR spin
He’s a dedicated doctor who has been in a position of responsibility in the National Health System (ESY) for many decades. He has no political affiliations and is there for anyone who needs help or advice, 24/7.
It is essential to know what kind of doctor he is before getting to his latest admission: “Covid patients who have to be intubated outside of an intensive care ward have, by definition, few chances of survival. You don’t need a study to prove it. In terms of how additional ICU beds were organized during the pandemic, let’s just say that it was extremely precarious. Their numbers were insufficient and when they were eventually made up, they could not operate properly. There was a shortage of specialized staff to take up the posts and absolutely no time for this to happen. We are in a much more dire position compared to other countries in Europe… How is the National Health System supposed to be propped up when we doctors cannot endure the working conditions? When we have 11 vacancies for pathologists [at the hospital where he works] and no demand?”
The reality is closer to what the research data show and much less so to what the authorities are trying to convey: The Covid mortality rate in Greece is directly related to the pressure hospitals are under and to geographical discrepancies in terms of the quality of care provided by the National Health System.
This was one of the findings of the first study carried out by infectious disease and public health experts Sotiris Tsiodras and Theodoros Lytras. More recent research has shown that intubated patients at hospitals and health centers outside of Athens were 64% more likely to die than those in the capital. Such discrepancies are not new; it’s just that they swelled to much more alarming proportions during the pandemic.
Is there any point in the health minister’s efforts to try to reverse the picture by presenting data from European and international organizations indicating that Greece has one of the lowest “excess mortality” rates in the European Union? Do these reports bring any comfort when doctors and the relatives of Covid victims have different “evidence” in their hands? And what, exactly, is opposition leader Alexis Tsipras’ contribution to this important issue?
Are we really saying that mortality rates in our country’s intensive care wards is a subject open to political exploitation, by any side? Spin and rhetoric do nothing to address the problem.