The measure of a just state is the treatment that it affords the weakest elements of society.

That treatment – the assistance it offers and the means it marshals to protect them – reflects the degree of its dedication to humanitarian values.

What today’s report in Ta Nea reveals about the situation prevailing at National Health Services Organisation (EOPPY) pharmacies is an embarrassment for the state.

People with chronic ailments must wait in line for up to three hours for palliative medication, or medicines necessary for their survival.

They are subjected to inconceivable inconveniences and fall prey to a bureaucracy that has not learned to exempt anyone from the web of its red tape.

The humiliation that these people experience is humiliating for all of us.

It is also humiliating for the competent ministers, who instead of hastening to make the lives of these citizens easier, spend their time writing coffeehouse-level political analyses on the social media.

These ministers forget that big-picture politics is the sum of small, everyday-life events. They insist on behaving badly, without learning anything from the power and perseverance of their fellow citizens.

It is the duty of the state to expedite all those procedures that are necessary to decongest and relieve EOPPY’s pharmacies.

Not a day should be lost, and no excuse will stand.

This is not merely a duty of public administration. It is above all a moral imperative.