A five-woman team from Patienterstatningen has finished a month-long tour of Greenland, helping women apply for the 300,000 kroner the Danish state owes those who were given contraception without consent.
The tour ended this week in Nuuk, where team leader Line Specht held an information meeting for around 90 women in the city’s community hall. DR reports that the team spent the past month moving down Greenland’s west coast to reach seven towns and settlements.
October is not an easy month to travel in Greenland, and the team had to improvise. Per DR, flights were cancelled and delayed, and when a storm grounded one flight, the team hired a small boat and sailed four hours through heavy seas to reach its meeting in Maniitsoq.
Who is on the team and what the scheme covers
A broad majority in the Folketinget has decided that Greenlandic women subjected to contraception without consent are entitled to a payment of 300,000 kroner from the Danish state. Patienterstatningen was given the task of communicating and handling the scheme.
The travelling team combines Greenlandic and Danish staff. Cecilie Berthelsen works as interpreter and translator, and Tone Frank is a psychologist who supports women who want to talk about the memories the process brings up. Louise Kringelbach handles communication, and Annette Hagdrup, a former district court judge, assists with legal questions.
Applications can be submitted online from home. Specht told DR that the long and costly tour was still the right priority, because it reaches women who are not reached through the organization’s normal communication channels. She said the team clearly helped some women apply who would not have applied otherwise.
More than 900 applications so far
Patienterstatningen has received more than 900 applications to date, and Specht expects the number to rise further after the large turnout in Nuuk. A DR report published a day earlier put the figure at 908, with 218 applications recognised and 12 rejected at that point.
Asked by DR whether making it easy to claim 300,000 kroner invites people to sign up simply to collect a check, Specht said it is not possible to rule out abuse entirely. Her answer was that the task is to ensure women can apply and receive what they are entitled to.
The Nuuk meeting was the last stop before the team pauses for winter. The trip was the first of three planned tours, and Sermitsiaq has reported that visits to southern and eastern Greenland are planned for spring 2027, because the weather makes travel impossible before then. Sermitsiaq also reported that between 75 and 100 women received help with applications during the first two stops.
What Patienterstatningen means for foreign residents using Danish healthcare
Patienterstatningen, in English the Danish Patient Compensation Association, is the body that normally assesses claims for injuries caused by treatment in the Danish health system. In this case the Folketinget assigned it the separate task of administering the 300,000 kroner payments, as DR reports. The scheme itself applies to Greenlandic women who were given contraception by Danish doctors without consent.
Internationals who are registered in Denmark use the same public system as Danish citizens, including the same route to Patienterstatningen if something goes wrong during treatment. Our guide to how healthcare in Denmark really works explains the structure, and this site also covers healthcare for tourists and expats. The compensation scheme reported here is specific to the Greenland cases, and the sources give no indication that it extends to any other group.
The case also sits inside the wider constitutional relationship between the two countries, explained in our background on whether Greenland is part of Denmark. Greenland has its own health service, but the payments in this scheme come from the Danish state. What is not yet known from the sources is the final number of applications or when the remaining two tours will be scheduled beyond spring 2027.
