For the third time in three months, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched this Sunday, February 12 in the streets of the Spanish capital to denounce the lack of manpower and means in the public health system.
They were a million demonstrators marching through the streets of Madrid, according to the unions. The prefecture, for its part, advances the figure of 250,000 people, a sign that mobilization has increased in recent months and weeks in the community of Madrid.
Although this region is the richest in the country, it is in the penultimate position of the 18 Spanish regions in terms of investment in public health, with 1,491 euros per year and per inhabitant, according to the latest report from the Ministry of Health. Health dating from 2020.
Care staff strike
We have thus witnessed in the Spanish capital a series of strikes by primary health doctors who complain about the lack of resources, personnel and money. As a result, about 80% emigrate and the anger is directed against the liberal Isabel Diaz Ayuso, the president of the Madrid Region. ” Doctors are not what we lack. The problem is that they have to pick up the potatoes, I don’t know where. Here the system does not work. Because we don’t hire enough doctors “, denounces Josefa, retired, at the microphone of our correspondent, Francois Musseau.
According to the FADSP, the Federation of Associations for the Defense of Public Health, which organizes the mobilization, doctors in the primary sector have on average only 10 minutes per patient. And often less, because in case of absence, they are not replaced.
For Omid, a doctor in central Madrid, the problem is to favor the private sector: “ It’s a way of stifling the health system, forcing people to find better private places. If you deprive the public sector of funding, then people find that there is no agile response to their illnesses and resort to the private system. We are citizens who want to continue to take care of our public system “.
Madrid President Isabel Diaz Ayuso has said she does not want to negotiate. But it is possible that she has to, given the scale of the discontent.
(And with AFP)