The Polis Chrysochous municipality issued a strong response on Thursday to claims that the area does not need a new hospital.

Mayor Yiotis Papachristofi said recent comments by Osak honorary president Marios Kouloumas – who argued that a new hospital was unnecessary – were “inaccurate and erroneous” and presented “a false picture” of local needs.

Residents, health professionals and anyone who has used the existing facilities even once hold a very different view, Papachristofi said.

“Saying that a renovation was sufficient for a building that has exhausted all functional limits is a frivolous, poorly documented and extremely dangerous position” that “downplayed the true extent of the problem”, the mayor pointed out.

Public health, he added, is “not a field for makeshift compromises or suggestions that underestimate the real needs of the entire Polis Chrysochous region”.

Papachristofi called on the government to proceed without delay with its decision to build a new hospital.