Ignacio Moreno Bustamante: The Impossible Challenge

October. Year 2015. In one of the operating rooms of the Carlos Haya Regional Hospital in Malaga, a 27-year-old young man plays the saxophone while a high-level medical team removes a brain tumor. Three neurosurgeons, two neuropsychologists, three neurophysiologists, an anesthesiologist, five nurses, … a nursing assistant and a caregiver participate in a process that turns out to be a complete success. As was already the policy of transplantation at the time, for example. Or the umbilical cord bank, which already stored yesterday’s stem cells which save lives today. Spanish public health in general and Andalusian in particular shines with its own light. They even changed your gender. Do you want a penis? Penis. Do you want vagina? Vagina. A la carte for greater glory not from doctors, but from politicians of the time. At that time, the plenipotentiary, Susana Díaz. “Public health is the crown jewel,” he boasted. And it probably was. But with an important nuance. Andalusian public health was milk on the tip of its iceberg. If you had a really serious problem, it was impossible to be in better hands. But as soon as we scratched a little, the system was absolutely chaotic, deficient. The waiting lists were endless. Like today. Thousands of patients waited months and months for surgery.

Today, ten years later, the truth is that the situation has hardly changed. Waiting lists have hardly been reduced. The working conditions of professionals are far from commensurate with their work and, even if management powers belong to the communities, resources must come from central government. And they don’t come. This is why they are on strike. This is why they remember the ancestors of Minister Mónica García, who designed a law much more focused on the political message than on solving problems. This is why they called a four-day strike, even though we are in the middle of a flu epidemic.

It is obvious that the health system will not improve until it has more budget so that doctors can carry out their work in decent conditions. An aggressive shock plan is necessary to regenerate the system from the roots. Modernize it and adapt it to the demands of 21st century users, who have given us more and more years of life and therefore demand more and better care. The challenge is very complicated. Probably impossible to achieve in its entirety, since whatever is done will always be insufficient. And of course, the results will not be visible in the short term. In Andalusia, the first steps are already underway, but the Sánchez government does not even have general budgets. The person responsible for preparing them, as we know, is another minister, Montero, who aspires to chair the Council and who was previously a health advisor, signing agreements to organize private clinics that she now repudiates. And his histrionic coryphs, quieter than at mass. And you, pray not to catch the flu. At least until next week, there will be no more strikes in your health center.

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