Although Easter seemed to pass without too much pressure leading to collapse at Torrevieja Hospital, the same cannot be said about the holiday weekend around 1 May, when patients had to be sent to other hospitals due to a shortage of staff.
The complaint has once again been raised by the ‘Sanidad Excelente’ platform, who reported the situation through their social media.
“Urgently admitted patients must be transferred to the Elche Hospital so that tests can be carried out on them.” The citizen platform in favour of quality healthcare refers to the case of a 10-year-old girl, a resident of Formentera del Segura who, due to a lack of healthcare personnel, had to be transferred by ambulance to the General Hospital of Elche to an ultrasound for a possible case of appendicitis.
The mayor of this town in Vega Baja, Francisco Cano, has personally called the manager of the Torrevieja Health Department, José Cano, who at first assured him that there should be at least one radiologist on duty in the centre. “I have been deceived.”
The staff at Torrevieja Hospital had advised the sick girl’s family to wait to see if her state of health improved to finally carry out the test at their facilities, eventually, or in the Elche hospital as an alternative.
Francisco Cano has contacted the girl’s family to ask about her state of health. To which her mother explained that last Sunday around 12 noon they had decided to call the ambulance, but after 3 p.m. in the afternoon they still had not received any response. “We have been waiting for the ambulance for several hours,” the girl’s mother wrote to the councillor on Whatsapp. Finally, the girl has been treated in Elche, where they have ruled out that it is a case of inflammation of the appendix.
The councillor thinks that the excessive waiting time for the ambulance may be due to the recent decentralisation process of the CICU in Valencia, which has been seen to have caused delays in ambulance response times, in one case with fatal consequences being investigated, as well as a “lack of foresight” for the celebration of the 2023 Women’s Cycling Tour, which started with seven stages this Monday from Torrevieja.
Finally, the mayor regrets that this is not a one-off problem and that since the reversion of the hospital to the public system, the residents are used to experiencing similar situations on a daily basis. “Not to mention ‘ER’s, especially on weekends”. Francisco Cano also talks about the medical staff, who are somehow paying the consequences of the reversal because “they don’t have enough means to do their job well”.
