Valladolid (EFE).- More than 8,000 people have attended this Sunday the calls of the platforms in defense of public health in Burgos, Palencia, Salamanca, León and Ávila to claim that public health “is a right and not a privilege ”, in mobilizations through the streets of the center of these towns.
Under the slogan ‘For our health: Public Health’ around 400 Leonese have demonstrated in the center of León against the attacks against Public Health and to demand an improvement in health care called by the Platform in Defense of Public Health that brings together to professionals, unions and in which different political formations also participate.
The spokesperson for the Platform, Carmen Franganillo, has denounced that “public health is being attacked more than ever by the neoliberal policies of the Junta de Castilla y León, which is destroying rural health and is breaking a large part of the commitments acquired in sanitary matter”.
Demonstration in favor of Public Health at its exit from the Plaza de San Marcos de León, this Sunday. EFE/J.Casares
In this sense, Franganillo has stressed the need to promote services such as Primary Care and that “25% of Public Health funds be allocated to Primary Care, since it is essential within the system.”
Regarding the province of León, the spokesperson has pointed out the broken promises with the health centers in the Pinilla and Villaquilambre neighborhoods that continue to accumulate delays for their start-up despite the large number of health cards that they have to attend to in its area of influence.
“The Pinilla center has been closed for two years with some remodeling works that from the Platform we had already proposed that it be done in another way,” Franganillo denounced, who recalled that it was already announced that the project to remodel the current health center “It was going to be much more expensive, it still does not provide service and it is causing funds to be diverted to private healthcare.”
As for Villaquilambre, the spokesperson for the platform has denounced that it is a promise of “years and years that has already been going on for decades and we see that it continues without us being able to see a health center that offers service to Villaquilambre, Navatejera and Villaobispo, whose users saturate the Eras de Renueva health center, which leads to an excess of booklets and, therefore, worse care”.
In Salamanca, around 4,000 people, according to sources from the Municipal Police, have once again taken to the streets to demand quality public healthcare and to protest the management being carried out by the Ministry of Health, convened by the Platform for the Defense of Public Health.
Chanting shouts against the president of the Junta de Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco from Salamanca, the protesters have traveled 1.2 kilometers, from the old Virgen de la Vega Hospital to the Health Management, on Mirat avenue.
Before concluding the demonstration, the conveners have read a manifesto in which they have shown their “deep concern about the very serious deterioration that public health is suffering in Castilla y León” and have asked that it be “free, universal and of quality” and that outsourcing be “exceptional and transitory, with the aim of ending it completely”.
About 3,000 in Burgos
In Burgos, the Platform for Public Health has asked the managers of this service “to stop playing with the health needs of the population” because “health and disease are not a game,” said one of its spokespersons. , Pablo Oyaguez.
At the head of a demonstration of nearly 3,000 people that has toured the center of Burgos with various banners in favor of public health, Oyagüez has insisted that “public health needs to be defended, armored and improved.”
In this sense, it has asked the Ministry of Health of the Junta de Castilla y León to stop privatizing, treat professionals well and allocate sufficient financial resources so that waiting lists stop being “a drama for many families”. .
In the specific case of Burgos, he has insisted that the University Hospital “be deprivatized”, that the Divino Valles hospital, currently underused, be enabled for palliative care and that health centers be improved where necessary, especially the García center Lorca, which was temporarily installed three decades ago.
In his opinion, “it is an indignity how the professionals are working and how the patients receive assistance” in that health center.
Palencia and Avila
Some 300 people have gathered in the Plaza Mayor in Palencia to defend the right to Public Health in Castilla y León convened by the Palencia Public Health Collective and supported by social organizations such as FAVPA, FEDISPA, FEAFES and AFACYL, trade unions such as CCOO , and policies such as PSOE, Izquierda Unida and Podemos.
Maite Rodríguez, president of the Provincial Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Palencia, has expressed concern about the deteriorating situation of public health in Palencia and Pilar Fernández, of the Fibromyalgia Association has been in charge of reading the manifesto that also It has been read in other provinces of Castilla y León in defense of public health.
“The continuous budget cuts, mismanagement and the diversion of public resources to private healthcare is jeopardizing the quality of public healthcare to which all people are entitled and which we may lose”, stated Pilar Fernández.
Among the demands that affect Palencia, advances have been requested in the construction of the new hospital that Palencia needs, the start-up of the radiotherapy service has been demanded, that the northern area of the province be endowed with a regional hospital and that there be mammography service in Aguilar de Campoo, as well as coordination of Primary Care with the two hospitals in the capital, Rio Carrión and San Telmo.
“We are demanding that an adequate public health service, Primary Care and specialties be recovered, as well as a fair budget for clinics and hospitals,” Joaquín Acevedo, a Primary Care doctor in the province of Ávila, told journalists. in the concentration in the capital of Avila, which has brought together almost a thousand people.
Another of the main demands is “the lack of doctors in the province of Ávila, a problem that is derived from the working conditions of all health personnel” EFE