Faeces, rodents and dead birds: The tragic condition of Larnaca’s old hospital (photos)

Conditions at  the old Larnaca General Hospital are abysmal, a Phileleftheros article published on Wednesday argues.

Reporters visited the hospital, which serves hundreds of people every day, and found broken windows, dead pigeons, faeces and cats.

Reporters started from the abandoned second floor of the hospital, where there were remains of dead pigeons, possibly eaten by mice or cats.

According to Phileleftheros although the floor is closed to the public, cats, serpents and other animals can enter through the broken windows and the old wooden shutters, while the bed legs in the wards have been visibly chewed by rodents.

The paper writes that the second floor of the hospital was donated by the government to the municipality of Larnaca in order to house its headquarters. However, when mayor Andreas Vyras and municipality technical staff saw its condition, they reacted angrily, saying that it would need hundreds of thousands of euro to be cleaned and become operational again.

The municipality has requested to meet the Health Minister to discuss the matter and insists that it will not accept the donation of the space in its current condition.

In addition, residents of the area told Phileleftheros that weeds which have been growing uncontrollably for years now in the abandoned offices and storage rooms in the hospital’s ground floor, are a potential hatching site for snakes and also host insects and rodents.

Also, the paper reports, citizens have been using the grounds to feed large numbers of cats, with  some fearing the potential health implications on humans.

“All these,” Phileleftheros writes, “coexist just a few metres away with offices and wards where doctors and nurses serve hundreds of people”.

The hospital now operates to provide pathologist, dermatologist and dentist services. Offices of the Ministry’s Health Services are also housed in its premises.

The conditions are just slightly better in the functioning part of the hospital, which is also housed in the same decades-old building, hospital staff say and report that its walls are covered in mould year-long, expressing fears for its safety.

Hospital staff demand from the government to come see the hospital and act on promises to improve its condition, which were made by the previous Health Minister George Pamborides.

Read more:

https://in-cyprus.com/citizens-complain-about-larnaca-general-hospital-waiting-times/