A bill to legalise the creation of university clinics is to be put before cabinet next Wednesday, Health Minister Michael Damianos said on Friday.

Speaking to the Cyprus News Agency (CNA), he began by lamenting the time taken to bring the bill to fruition, saying, “we are late”, and thus called on parliament and political parties to “proceed immediately” to pass it into law, adding that it can bring “only positive things” to the country.

The debate over the possible creation of university clinics dates back to 2013 and came to a head in 2016 when then University of Cyprus rector Constantinos Christofides sent academic doctors to the Nicosia general hospital to start work, leading to a showdown with the government doctors’ union Pasyki.

The union had immediately threatened to go on strike, declaring that it would never accept having medical professors being put in charge of the clinics at the Nicosia general hospital, effectively placing government doctors hierarchically below them.

It also said such an arrangement would allow for medical professors to claim two salaries – one from the university and one from the hospital.

The university eventually backed down, and the matter was forgotten, with the government of the day saying there were no regulations for the operation of university clinics and that these had to be in place before they were opened. 

Since then, other, short-lived attempts were made to bring such legislation forward, but none made it to parliament. Damianos now believes it can be his bill which brings the concept to life.

“We currently have a balanced bill,” he began, saying it “institutionalises the way in which university clinics and university hospitals will be created in Cyprus in the public sector, but also under certain conditions in the private sector”.

“Equally important is the fact that in the text of the bill are provisions for the creation of university clinics at the Nicosia general hospital and the Makarios hospital,” he added.

He then promised that the bill “will not be drawn this time” and added that there will be “pressure on everyone” to pass it into law.

“We created the University of Cyprus’ medical school in 2015 and three more private medical schools since, and we do not have university clinics. This does not help the students’ education or the training of doctors in Cyprus,” he said.

He added that with the passage of the bill, Cyprus’ health sector will be “particularly upgraded”, and stressed the benefits for patients, too.

“Since it upgrades the service provision sector and the know-how, including the research which will be conducted in these clinics by university staff, who may also come from abroad to work in these clinics via the universities, the service that patients receive will certainly be upgraded, possibly in more specialised fields,” he said.