Party leaders clash over health on campaign trail

Party leaders focused on the issue of health on the campaign trial on Friday, with New Democracy’s leader saying the issue was a top priority and SYRIZA’s leader accusing the conservatives of having a “secret agenda” for hospitals.

Upgrading the public health system is a “non-negotiable priority” and a single-party majority government is the only way to carry out the reforms the country needs, Kyriakos Mitsotakis said.

Speaking on the campaign trail in Istiaia, Evia, the New Democracy leader said he was “tired of replying to the fake news of the opposition parties, who claim that we supposedly want to privatize the national health system.”

“We supported the national health system during the pandemic and we continue to support it. We will hire 10,000 doctors and nurses. We will rebuild our health centers. We will modernize our hospitals, emergency departments. We will re-examine the issues that concern the operation of the ambulance service and patient transfers in both ambulances and by air,” he said.

He added that a pilot program for transporting patients in remote and inaccessible areas would be “turned into action.”

Earlier, the SYRIZA leader charged that New Democracy has a “secret agenda in the economy and especially for public health.”

This agenda, Alexis Tsipras told a press conference, was exposed by in the statements of Spiros Pnevmatikos, an MP candidate for New Democracy in Evia, who on Friday announced his withdrawal from the election in the wake of his controversial remarks regarding the management of cancer patients.

Tsipras said Mitsotakis’ promise in 2019 to implement “hair-raising” reforms in public health had been prevented by the Covid pandemic.

The SYRIZA leader added that claim that the conservatives’ manifesto had been “costed and approved” by the European Commission was “yet another shameless lie.”

“Most of these measures remain uncosted and it is hard to see how New Democracy will finance them when the fiscal space it has established for itself, with its own figures in the stability program … is miniscule and accounts for just 0.3 percent of GDP in 2026,” Tsipras commented.

Visiting the northern city of Katerini, PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis criticized statements made by New Democracy representatives about the National Health System as “contemptuous.”

“It is not a priority for New Democracy to deal with the major social issues of our time, such as reviving the National Health System, hiring permanent staff for the ambulance service and hospitals, using the [EU’s] Recovery Fund,” he said.