Even though public health officials are hoping that the disaster of Torrevieja is kept out of the public eye, a video posted on TikTok has once again highlighted the problems patients are still facing in getting medical care.
Little over a year of the reversion to public health, the quality of care of the health department of the Alicante region is increasingly being questioned.
On this occasion, the daughter of a cancer patient posted a video in which her mother is seen waiting more than four hours to be treated at the health centre.
In the video, the daughter explains that after an hour and a half waiting for the arrival of an ambulance, her mother was registered at the hospital at 4:50 p.m. without being treated for hours. The recording was made at midnight and the patient’s daughter denounces that she was left on a stretcher in the corridor for four hours “without even taking her blood pressure.”
The patient “can’t breathe,” continues her daughter, having to carry oxygen twenty-four hours a day. “When a person comes to a hospital it is because they are really sick. Not because they come for a walk. My mother never wants to come to the doctor,” adds the complainant.
The video shows how the case of this patient is not unique, there are many other beds in the corridors without being attended by doctors, nurses or auxiliaries. “Nobody here does anything, we can’t stand this,” she says. ” I’m not saying that doctors don’t work. They do work, of course, but we can’t be like this,” she concludes. The video ends at 0.12 hours and the patient continues without being treated.
It is one more complaint of the chaos in the health department since the Department of Health of the Generalitat Valenciana took over its management. First run by Ana Barceló, now a socialist candidate for the Alicante City Council in 2023, leaving the health department to be run by Miguel Mínguez.
Since the arrival of the latter to the management of the department there have been many meetings but the number of doctors in the Emergency Department has not increased, and the medical chief of the hospital has even resigned. The manager imposed by Barceló, however, continues in her position although all the unions, the Alicante Medical Association and the Síndic de Greuges have denounced the situation.
The Ministry of Health has admitted that “we do not dispute that this woman could have received better care, but in the video of her daughter it is shown that she is already in the emergency area, with which the triage has passed and we understand that is controlled by the doctors of this service”. In fact, “cancer patients have priority,” they emphasise.
