Under the burden of heavy economic hardships and cuts in social welfare benefits, the family of a quadriplegic man saw no other solution: they loaded the 43-year-old man in a borrowed carrier and transported him from Plomari village to the island’s capital city. There, the family briefed the IKA directors, that it cannot come up for the expenses of the chronic-ill man. “We hand him over to you” the relatives told the directors.
According to the man’s family, Greece’s biggest insurance fund IKA cut the social benefit three months ago with the effect that the family cannot afford to buy neither medicine, nor dippers, not other basic goods essential for him.
Local news portal LesvosNews.gr spoke with the local IKA director who said that the Health Ministry recently changed the procedures for granting social benefits.
“Patients won’t appear before health committees, but they will be checked at home by assigned physicians first” Kladogennis told the news portal.
On the island of Mytilene there are some 53 patients awaiting for to be checked for social benefits, however the shortage of personnel makes them struggle to live without benefits for more than five months.
After the family’s radical action, Kladogennis intervened, the quadriplegic man was checked by an assigned physician, who submitted his report to the relevant committee.
When will the man and his family receive the granted benefits? Well…. you know, here is Greece…
Two years of IMF imposed austerity have almost ruined the Greek health sector, with patients being obliged to pay prescription medicine out of their own pockets, shortages in medical and pharmaceutical supplies and health-care personnel.
On the other hand, the notorious and chronic exploitation of social welfare benefits and allowances by thousands of not eligible citizens ended in an almost horizontal cut of these benefits for the real needy one.
PS. Old Greek saying: ” when the leg aches, one cuts the leg…”
