A patient’s censure of the health system
Cancer patient Amalia Kalyvinou wrote the following in her blog, which touched the nation following her death just 10 days ago: «Doctors (in Greece) are irresponsible, incompetent and plunderers, only concerned with making a profit.» «Pharmaceutical firms wield ultimate control; the judiciary allows them to get away with anything scot-free and peoples’ lives continue to be cut short,» the 30-year-old charged. The story told is of the difficult days of a girl who suffered from cancer from the age of 8 and decided to express her rage 20 years later when she had seen enough – the murderous indifference, the humiliating amateurism, the cynism, the nightmarish bureaucracy. Amalia decided to tell her story when the mistakes of others brought her hellish experience full circle. Amalia, whose cancer turned out to have reached an advanced stage after receiving a superficial diagnosis that missed the mark, offered shattering insight into all the problems that have caused so much aggravation and pain for millions of Greeks at state (and private) hospitals. Her words are scathing and incisive. And every response on her blog brought comfort to her soul. «The sweetness, the practical and moral support, your serenades, your humor, the thousands of little contributions have made me cry with emotion rather than frustration for the first time,» she said. The guileless, down-to-earth and dispassionate Amalia had not been counting on moving people but on sensitizing them, informing them of the true state of affairs in the health sector. Without a trace of self-pity, the 30-year-old conveyed her personal, shocking «news bulletins» – reports unmarred by any expediencies, undoctored by half-truths. She had just a few «interlocuters» to begin with but the more merciless she was in her criticism, the more she spread humanity, provoking compassion and tears on a nationwide level. «Guys, do you realize what we have done, what you have done?» Amalia wrote on April 29 to her thousands of friends on the blogosphere. «I have had this blog for a year-and-a-half and, to begin with, only those in the hospitals I was visiting were reading it… But, thanks to the chain reaction provoked by your interest and the force of your comments, medical unaccountability has now become news,» she said. «I hope our efforts become an avalanche which knocks out all those callous medics taking under-the-table payments, all those mean bureaucrats who are killing us and our children,» she said. Amalia is no longer with us but her voice continues to echo within the blogosphere and beyond, nagging at our consciences. Let us hope that her voice, united with the many others who have joined her, will shake established practices and make our national health service more humane.
