The patient-led Plataforma por la Reversión Del Vinalopó En Aspe, focussed on the reversal of the Vinalopó hospital, made up of organised citizens, associations, trade union organisations and politicians from Aspe, Crevillent, Elche, Hondón de las Nieves and Hondón de los Frailes, has carried out another campaign to collect signatures at the doors of the CSI health centre in Aspe, managed by the investment group Ribera Salud, to demand its public management.
This health centre, dependent on the Vinalopó department of Elche/Elx-Crevillent, presents the same problems as all the centres attached to this privately managed health department, as the platform explained, one of the many reasons why the citizen union between regions was born, which in Aspe demanded that the Generalitat Valenciana begin the procedures to make the reversion to public management possible.
In this sense, members of the platform of all the populations of this Health Department have been present to carry out the collection of signatures with which they intend to put pressure on the Valencian Government to change its mind and not maintain the extension to the company.
Ana Miralles, representing the platform in Aspe, explained that “we have never agreed with this type of private management because we find it shameful that a hospital and health centres cannot be managed by the Generalitat Valenciana and that this is transferred management to large investors.”
Also representing Aspe, Vanesa Martínez has encouraged citizens to participate in this campaign to collect signatures “because you cannot do business with health and we should not have deficiencies like those we have, for example, when a birth is complicated in Vinalopó Hospital and send the newborn to the General Hospital as there is no neonatal ICU in the privatised hospital.”
For her part, Eva Irles, representing the platform in Elche, has pointed out that “we do not understand why if the Generalitat Valenciana assumes the reversion of all public hospitals so that the management is also public, they leave this only Health Department in the hands of a private company. Depending on the zip code to which a person belongs, they have different management models with the problems that the privatized model presents due to its delays in primary care, the reduction of the professional staff, or the lack of investment.”
The platform started the campaign to collect signatures less than two weeks ago and they already have more than 1,600 supports from their online petition alone, in addition to those they are collecting on the street. They will continue with actions at the doors of health centres and on the streets to obtain maximum support for all affected populations and thus ensure that the Valencian Government offers this part of the citizens equal conditions in something as important as health.
In a sense of irony, what this group are demanding is the opposite to places like Torrevieja, where Ribera Salud did run the hospital before it was reverted back to public management, and has shown considerable decline in every aspect since.
