Varouhakis recalls the bad years at Dafni. “Only the material conditions have changed,” he told Kathimerini.

“I went to Dafni in 1961 and left there when I retired. I often felt the need to go to the hospital to see how those people live. In the early years, I had that experience, of course, because we had a duty roster and stayed overnight. I spent the first years in Dafni amid excrement, in waste and excrement. There was one doctor on duty and 2,500 sick people. Once they phoned me to say a patient had died. To go and see him I had to tread either on excrement or on people who were asleep on the floor.

“For many years, conditions at Dafni were like those at [the leprosy asylum on the island of] Leros. People died, in body and spirit.

“Things started to improve when there were people there who couldn’t stand the situation any longer.

“It affects you directly. That is your job, to strive to make things better.

“At Dafni I created a rehabilitation therapy team with all the services that patients need.

“I had been promised that it would be made an institution, but when I retired it was disbanded.”