+++
Την Ελληνική μας σελίδα θα την βρείτε εδω http://mki-ellinikou.blogspot.com/ +++


Thursday, September 26, 2013

Are we with the Darkness or the Light?




PRESS RELEASE
Are we with the Darkness or the Light?


In the 20 months of MCCH’s operation we have published numerous stories of the grim reality people face today who have no money or insurance and who have serious health problems.  They make for heavy reading.  People shut out of the public health system; one wonders why the public prosecutor has not intervened.  
Today, we want to tell the world a profoundly human story.
On Monday, 16 September, a volunteer doctor at our clinic found an elderly woman waiting for him, her eyes swollen with tears.  The woman said “Doctor, you are my only hope.” 
Her 23 year old grandson is uninsured and suffers from chronic myelogenous leukemia.  The treatment is the medication GLIVEC; the cost is around 2,000 euro a month.
She was searching for hope; the poor family could not begin to cover the costs to maintain the young man’s life.  The life of the 23 year old was in imminent danger; for several days he had not had access to medication and was not able to follow the required therapy.
Today, a young man is endangered because the numbers don’t work out at the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Health.  It’s an “accounting problem” a spokesman at the Ministry of Health answered us a short while ago, regarding another cancer patient of ours.
We are pounding on the door at the Ministry of Health once more and ask “Are you going to let this 23 year old young man die?”
The Ministry of Health is silent on the subject.  But in only one day his medication was secured for him for a month – and in a profoundly heartwarming way, a profoundly humbling way.
We announced the problem.  Two patients who are receiving the same treatment decided to give up some of their own medication.  Once gave ten pills, and the other twenty, so that the young uninsured man could have a month’s respite.  Life for one month!  That is the essential, the magnificent message of SOLIDARITY.
A patient gives up extremely expensive medicine for another, cutting off a bit of the thread that keeps him alive.  How humbling and how moving is it to hear from a cancer patient “take some of these pills from mine.”  At the same time, the Ministry of Health answers “It’s an accounting problem.”
For the umpteenth time, we wonder, if this situation was to befall one of their children, what would the decision makers at the Ministry do?
And more importantly, where are our leaders?  With the darkness, or with the light of life?

METROPOLITAN COMMUNITY CLINIC AT HELLENIKO

  Working Hours
(MONDAY-FRIDAY 10:00-14:00) (MONDAY 17:00-20:00) 
(TUESDAY 14:00-20:00) (WEDNESDAY 16:00-20:00) (THURSDAY 14:00-20:00)
(FRIDAY 14:00-19:00) (SATURDAY 10:00-14:00) 
CONTACT PHONE NUMBER: +30 210 9631950 
ADDRESS: Inside the old American Military Base, 200m away from the Traffic Police of the Municipality of Helleniko, next to the Cultural Center of Helleniko
Post code TK16777, Elliniko, Attiki, Greece

Blog http://mkie-foreign.blogspot.gr/ Email mkiellinikou@gmail.com