The healthcare still is one of the fundamental right of the Greek citizens.

N.Polyzos, New York Times, 31/1/2012

The healthcare still is one of the fundamental right of the Greek citizens. Undoubtedly, the economic crisis has only an impact on their access to the private sector of healthcare, regarding to their limited economic means. Thus, we have the indefeasible obligation and we proudly refer that we succeeded in our mission, to create a public healthcare system strong and effective enough, capable to respond to the increased needs. We would like to underline the following points, in order to redress the balance discomposed by the references in the article in doubt:

• All citizens living in Greece have free access to NHS hospital emergency departments. The entry fee of 5 euros is paid only for the rest occasional outpatients and it is not charged to the inpatients.
• The healthcare spending has been indeed reduced, in order to increase the savings, due to effective procedures of procurement and inventory control. However, the accurate figures are 8% in 2010 compared to 2009 and 12% in 2011 compared to 2010, 20% in total.
• According to the figures published by HellasStat, there is no rise to mortality proportion in the population. All expenditures needed for healthcare provisions are paid by Social Security Funds, including the vaccinations in need which are prescribed by the SSF doctors.
• There is an outstanding increase of the inpatients, in specific 24% in 2010 compared to 2009 and 9% in 2011 compared to relevant period in 2010.

As an effort to increase savings via budget reductions, there were alleged cuts in hospital budgets. As a result of our communication with the President of Evangelismos Hospital, Mr. Theodorou, it came out that the budget of 2012 is indeed 136 million euros whereas for 2011 it was 137 million euros.