The citizen-led platform for the reversal of Vinalopó (Plataforma por la Reversión del Vinalopó) has started to collect signatures to support their case to demand that the Generalitat Valenciana reverse the management situation in the hospital and its health centres and join the rest of the area’s facilities now under public management.
The campaign, organised by citizens of Elx, Crevillent, Aspe, Hondón de las Nieves and de los Frailes, will campaign at street level and online to express the demands of their neighbours who do not understand why the Valencian Government keeps this facility in private hands.
The platform held a press conference at doors of the Vinalopó Hospital to inform citizens of the start of a campaign to collect signatures to demand that the Valencian Government revert to public management of this hospital and its health centres.
It is the only Health Department in the entire Valencian Community in which its management is in the hands of a private company, Ribera Salud, which has been left out of the reversions to the public management of the Generalitat Valenciana as they have been carried out in the rest of the hospitals, which means that a part of the citizens have different conditions from the rest of the population in their right of access to quality public healthcare.
The platform has demanded that the Generalitat Valenciana revert this Health Department and make its management one hundred percent public, because, as they have stated: “health cannot obey the economic interests of a private company.”
Teresa Boix, representing the Crevillent neighbourhood movement, said, “We do not understand why we have to stay with privately managed healthcare, a comparative grievance with the rest of the citizens of the Valencian Community who do enjoy 100% public healthcare,” Boix recalled and pointed out the problems that present the health centres of this department where appointments in Primary Care take more than a month, the continuous change of family doctors or the very significant data that demonstrates the reduction of staff and the work overload of professionals such as the case of the five paediatricians that the Vinalopó Hospital has compared to the fifteen paediatricians at the General Hospital of Elche and which cares for 1,500 fewer boys and girls.”
Ana Miralles, from Aspe, explained that “it is impossible to make an appointment in Primary Care because they close the appointment online or you go to the counter and they give you an appointment for a month or even two months. And he assured that “if in this Community the reversions to public management of all the privatised hospitals were being carried out, we thought that this hospital was also going to have public management. We do not understand the communication from the Minister of Health, Marciano Gómez, who decides to extend the concession to the private company. The only thing we ask is that private management ends and that whoever wants a private hospital pays for it.”
Gemma Misas, from Hondón de las Nieves, has assured that “we are not late with this request, the Valencian Government has time to change its mind and carry out this reversal so that we stop having the problems that these citizens have for having a code different postcard. That is why we began collecting signatures in all the affected populations, we will go to the markets, the squares and wherever necessary so that both users and citizens in general join this petition that is for justice.”
“The reversal must begin now, so that it can be effective, orderly and efficient. Not only do we want the reversal, we want it to be done responsibly and appropriately, it is a complicated and long process, which must have citizen participation so that the reversal arrives in conditions in 2025. Citizens want to participate in this process and monitor that Let’s not arrive with an incompatible information system, outsourced laboratories or insufficient staff,” said Carmen Palomar from Elche.
“For the platform, the Ministry of Health has failed in its obligation to control and ensure quality care in this department and the opacity of the management company, Ribera Salud, makes it almost impossible to know the destination of our taxes for quality health care. It is urgent that the procedures be initiated to arrive in conditions next year for the reversion to public management because it is a question of health and equal access to health services that should be a public right,” concluded Carmen Palomar.
It should be noted that what the platform is demanding is the same as occurred in Torrevieja, where the management of the private firm Ribera Salud was reverted to public control, and the hospital and health centres have not been the same since, sadly, however, leading to a considerable and notable deterioration of the service provided, where the once award winning hospital has been plagued by problems from lengthy delays in emergency care, and considerable delays in obtaining appointments in primary care.
