Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis came under fire on the World Breast Cancer Day when he announced free mammography tests for women aged 49 and 50 every two years. Left-wing SYRIZA and socialist KINAL/PASOK weren’t just mad to heavily criticize the PM for the free test that could save lives of thousands of women. It was only that the free test has been available by the public health care system in the last two years, when the “measure” was institutionalized by a relevant Law.
Both SYRIZA and KINAL describer Mitsotakis’ announcement as a “PR show.”
“We remind Mr. Mitsotakis that the free digital mammography by EOPYY is valid already since October 2016,” a SYRIZA MP said in a statement adding that since June 2018, “the mammogram for the early diagnosis of Breast Cancer is included in the free preventive examinations provided by EOPYY.”
The Health Ministry decision provided free mammography every two years in women aged forty (40)-fifty (50) years and each year in women over fifty (50) or in women over thirty five (35), provided that the latter belong to a high risk group.
The Law adopted by the Greek Parliament in 2018 offered more coverage for women than the 2016 law, ex Health Minister Andreas Xanthos (SYR) underlined.
Chairwoman of KINAL, Fofi Gennimata, said that the government has been exposed on the issue of digital mammography.
“Such issues are not offered for PR,” Gennimata, who is a breast cancer survivor herself, stressed.
So what happened with PM’s proclamation? It’s either his advisers including the Health Minister had no idea about the real world or ….they insisted with no second thought that the PM makes a gift to women on the Breast Cancer Day. A gift that reduces the free mammography from “annual” to “every two years.”
Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias tweeted on Monday that the program goes into force on November 10 and only for women 49-50 years old, whether they have insurance or not.
Στις 10 Νοεμβρίου ξεκινούν οι δωρεάν ψηφιακές μαστογραφίες για τις γυναίκες 49-50 ετών, ασφαλισμένες και ανασφάλιστες.
🎀 https://t.co/f69F4t6Okl#breastcancerawareness pic.twitter.com/ZTYCS9awl0
— Vassilis Kikilias (@Vkikilias) October 26, 2020
