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.
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.
