Dialysis patients in the Hellín region demand the treatment center promised a year ago

However, a year later, the issue was discussed again on November 27 in the Cortes through a question from the Popular Parliamentary Group, but without a definitive solution being proposed by the Council. For now, the official message from the regional government to the seat of Parliament, in this case through the Minister of Education, Amador Pastor, is to carry out a clinical safety and effectiveness study of this new vital medical service for these people, requested for its implementation at the Hellín Hospital.

Faced with this situation, those affected have carried out during this period a whole series of protest actions channeled through the Association of Renal Patients of the Region of Hellín (Aderhe), an entity created for this purpose which has already gathered 7,000 signatures and defended this cause at the municipal plenary session of Hellín, in addition to receiving the support of the Foral Council and participating in the public consultation of the Ministry of Health on the new certainty of SNS services.

The absence of a dialysis center in Hellín forces all patients in the region with this disease, usually of advanced age, to daily mobility described as a real ordeal, since in many cases it means traveling three days a week to the capital Albacete, to receive hemodialysis treatment in the city. Avericum concerted centersince only extreme cases are treated in hospital. In the case of some patients, this means traveling up to 800 kilometers in three weekly trips, as they live in remote areas in an area of ​​high nature value with winding mountain roads at an altitude of between 400 and 800 meters. In some cases, this means between an hour and a half and two hours of travel, another two and a half to three hours of therapeutic treatment session and return.

There is a lack of specialists

In addition to this itinerant trip of three times a week as a general rule, the Aderhe association indicates that these patients are treated in Albacete in a center which presents serious problems which, according to it, are recognized by the Administration itself. Among them, they point out that there are professionals who do not appear as specialists in nephrology and that prolonged absences occur without replacement, compromising the continuity of care. Concerning this lack of personnel, which he describes as “a real lack of security”, Aderhe indicated that he had presented since April 2022 complaints to the Mediator, that in his response he indicated that the center had “four highly qualified specialized professionals”, without specifying that they were nephrologists, although this specialty is mandatory according to the BOE (Order SCO/2604/2008). In the same response it was indicated that the center had “more than forty doctors specialized in nephrology”, a fact which, according to them, is incompatible with the reality of the General Hospital of Albacete, since according to its organic staff at Sescam it only has 12 nephrologists. To verify the facts, Aderhe requested official information from the College of Physicians of Albacete, which did not respond in accordance with data protection law, unlike the General Council of Official Colleges of Physicians of Spain.

But at the same time, they emphasize that for four years this center, coinciding with the change of winning company, has not had access to the medical history of patients from the Hellín region, although they assure that “they work there”. They also indicate that this “risk situation” avoided with “rhetorical arguments” has been recognized by the Ministry of Health and the Ombudsman, which violates the law on patient autonomy and compromises vital decisions, and on the other hand there are doubts about compliance with the technical specifications of Sescam, especially in terms of nephrological monitoring and evaluation of the transplant list.

This situation, many of which come from Aderhe, also clashes with national initiatives such as the promotion of home dialysis or the National Chronic Strategy 2025-2028, as well as the H3.0 Health Plan of Castilla-La Mancha which promotes active patient participation and territorial justice, which on the other hand is impractical in this region.

“What for the Administration is a delayed procedure, for kidney patients in the Hellín region is constant physical and emotional wear and tear,” they say from Aderhe. In the daily routine, patients begin their journey at dawn from the remote districts of Sierra del Segura or Alcaraz, pick up other patients in collective ambulances and travel up to two hours to arrive at the dialysis center. After three or four hours of treatment, they make the same return trip and return home late in the afternoon or evening, with little time to rest before the next trip. This means that in this year 2025, there will be patients who have already accumulated more than 150 trips each.

According to current data provided by Aderhe, 35 patients from the Hellín region are currently dialyzed in Albacete, while two other patients are dialyzed at home. And all this in a scenario in which the province of Albacete only has one dialysis center, compared to three located in the province of Ciudad Real and two in Toledo. Likewise, they indicate that Hellín is the area with the greatest geographical dispersion and the lowest oblation density of Castile-La Mancha and the one with the greatest average slope.

Kidney test in Hellín

The Alcer Nacional organization has also repeatedly denounced the territorial inequality in access to renal replacement treatments and has also spoken out on this specific issue of the request for a hemodialysis center in Hellín. According to Alcer, the Hellín Regional Hospital, with more than 13,000 m² of surface area and modern infrastructure, has the technical and human capacity to accommodate this essential service. He also emphasizes that the establishment of the center would represent not only an act of health and territorial justice, but also a sustainable measure. At the same time, it would reduce emissions and the environmental impact resulting from hundreds of weekly trips on high mountain roads, an area classified as SPA (Special Protection Zone for Birds) and recognized for its ecological value.

Given the situation, Alcer requests that the Council of Communities of Castile-La Mancha incorporates in the next general budgets a specific item for the creation of the Hellín Hemodialysis Center, that the Hellín Hospital be equipped with a structural nephrology service and specialized personnel, and that the development of home dialysis modalities be favored in a second phase.