A move by the government to form a committee to decide if patients should be allowed to receive a high-tech scan that helps doctors diagnose serious illnesses has led to some people waiting more than two months for a verdict, Kathimerini learned yesterday.

The Health Ministry set up the panel in May to decide whether civil servants who want to have the PET (Positron Emission Tomography) and CT (Computed Tomography) scans should have the procedure covered by their social insurance fund, as it costs around 1,500 euros.

However, Kathimerini has learned that the committee will only begin assessing applications for the scans today. The head of the committee, Kyriakos Strigaris, told Kathimerini that it takes time to set up such a panel and that there were no urgent cases to deal with.

PET and CT scans are imaging tools that doctors use to pinpoint disease states in the body. By combining these two scanning technologies, a PET/CT scan enables doctors to more accurately diagnose and identify cancer, heart disease and brain disorders.