Dignity and humanity for the uninsured cancer patients

After the sensation which had been globally provoked by the American newspaper’s “Washington Post” article and Mr. Georgiadi’s statement that only at the last stages of his disease an uninsured cancer patient can have access in free hospital treatment via the emergency units, another story makes public and enlightens the limits of human drama.

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Mr. Giorgos Komakis chose to public his story through the Metropolitan Social Healthcare office of Elliniko, by pleading for humanity and dignity to the ministry of health. The only thing he asks for is that his cancer patient wife could end her life with dignity in proper conditions. In the same conditions that must have access all human beings whether are insured or not.

The 64 year old man is over 8 years unemployed . Until 2011 he managed to do some day labors so that he could renew his medical insurance to IKA for him and his wife. Since that time though, they are both uninsured.

Last September his wife diagnosed with lung cancer, which became metastatic and spread to the rest of her body. That was the begging of a tragic story that challenges the limits of human dignity. Mr. Komakis, in order to ensure the necessary medical and pharmaceutical care for his wife had to signed –as every other uninsured people does- consent forms for the public hospital ensuring that he will pay for the total cost of his wife’s medical and pharmaceutical treatment.

As he had no income neither personal property, his debt was forward to the tax office and followed the standard procedure for those who owe to the state. By signing those consent forms Mr. Komakis did his obvious for him duty to the person that had spent more than 40 years of their lives with in order to offer her some dignity and humanity the last days of her life. He knows that the state will soon begin to search for him but since he has no personal property or money he wonders about will happen next in his case. Imprisonment?

Speaking to a volunteer of the Metropolitan Social Healthcare office of Elliniko, Mr. Komakis says: “It is a shame for them to say to a cancer patient that I will leave you to die in the streets because you have no insurance.”

He would like to ask the ministry of Health “if not for all patients, at least for those who suffer from cancer and cannot deal with it, to have the sensitivity and help them to get a life extension. This is human, this is all I ask for, this is what every person should ask for other people too regardless if they are insured or not”.

“To be treated as a human being at her last moments”, he says –with wet eyes- about his wife, concluding his massage to the society.

Metropolitan Social Healthcare office of Elliniko, asks the ministry of Health to settle the debt and stop hunting all the uninsured citizens. “The uninsure citizens that suffer from critical diseases cannot cover the extortionate costs of treatment especially if they are unemployed for a long time. The state should stop acting cruelly and inhumanly to those who had been unlucky and ill”.

The minister of health though, answering today about the attacks that he had faced because of his statements in “Washington Post” sufficed to say that by his reforms the uninsured will have access to doctors and medicine prescriptions via PEDY but not pharmaceutical care for free medicines due to the luck of funds.

This means that the uninsured cancer and chronic diseased patients will have to pay for treatment themselves or left to die.