Is the 'Aids Station' at AKH Linz the next austerity victim?

In Linz,the hospital beds for AIDS patients could soon be a victim of austerity. Today's report, the "Upper Austrian News" (OÖN).

Specifically, it is planned that the Department of Dermatology at Linz General Hospital, where the suffering from AIDS patients are treated, is converted to an outpatient clinic. This would give a care around the clock no longer possible. However, the department is the only place in Upper Austria, can be treated in AIDS.

The Special Commission to reform the hospital proposes to relocate the hospital beds for AIDS patients to another ward. But Heinz Brock, medical director of the Linz General Hospital, is skeptical: ".. This is a highly complex form of treatment There is no other department that has this power is beyond me, how this is," says the OÖN. He stressed that the transfer would in another department a "huge loss of quality" in the treatment result. He feared: "That would be the end of AIDS care in the General Hospital." Brock proposes instead to reduce the number of beds in dermatology from the current 67 to 20 to 30. This would save costs and maintain the standard.

Opposition to the proposal of the Reform Commission is also the Aids Upper Austria. Its president Erich O. Gates called the proposal "technically incomprehensible, inefficient, unprofessional and not only questionable, but for experts, even highly dubious."

Source: GGG.at