The Mayor of Ierapetra, Mr. Theodosios Kalantzakis, has expressed his concerns regarding the movement of another doctor from the Health Centre in Ierapetra, in a letter to the Director of the amalgamated hospitals of Lasithi, Mrs. Spintoura, to the director of the 7th Regional Health Division of Crete, Mrs. Mavromati and the Deputy Director of the General Hospital of Ierapetra, Mr. Arakadakis.
“This act results in yet another blow to the Hospital of Ierapetra, which during the last few years, has had to deal with an abundance of problems due to lack of medical staff.
The decision to move this doctor, hurts the residents of the wider area of Ierapetra, who have fought repeatedly and hard for the staffing of their Hospital.
How is it possible for Mrs. Spinthoura to suggest moving a doctor from a hospital which already has a shortage of medical staff?
How is it possible to remove local, Ierapetrian doctors from the hospital, when it is so well known how difficult it is to recruit staff to the town, from other parts of the Country?
How is it possible to remove doctors from the Health Centre, something which could create issues of the operation of those, and with the doctors in training in these establishments?
How can you talk about strengthening the Hospital, when the Pathology Clinic, the most central and crucial clinic in all hospitals, continues to not operate properly, remaining closed for several days a month?
These questions are just a few of those that come to the minds of the thousands of citizens in the wider area of Ierapetra, who are forced to fight every so often, for the right that every town should have, which is, to have staff in the local health structures.
In regard to this, we urgently request that the decision to move the doctor from the Ierapetra Hospital should most certainly not proceed.
We ask that this doctor remains where he is and that any suggestion of his movement be cancelled.
Access to public health care is a provision that every citizen should have as a right, one that nobody has the right to decide in any way, to deprive us of.
Ierapetra, like every town, has the right to have a fully equipped and staffed hospital!”
