The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo (CC), asserted this Tuesday that Canarian healthcare is not failing and that what citizens indicate after being users is that they are "highly" satisfied with the care received.
This is how the regional president responded to a question from the spokesperson of Nueva Canarias, Luis Campos, who asserted that a large part of the indicators have worsened compared to two years ago, when there were still ravages from the effects of the pandemic, while accusing the Government of doing "tricks" to hide the waiting lists.
An extreme that Clavijo has denied, as he has defended that waiting lists have decreased by 10% in the surgical interventions section, which places the Canary Islands, according to the president, above the Spanish average.
He has admitted that in the University Hospital of the Canary Islands "there are peaks and there have been difficulties" but that an "enviable" job has been done by the hospital's management to resolve the program in its emergencies.
He has also suggested that "there are people against these changes" but that it will soon be verified if the results are positive.
"If we did the same as you, we would fail. We have opened multipurpose buildings, there are 200 more beds, 100 reinforcement personnel. We have difficulties with some specialties, but we cannot find them on the market, so I do not share the diagnosis," the president defended.
Finally, Clavijo considered it "adventurous" and "a lack of respect for public health workers in the Canary Islands" to talk about failure in management and pointed out that "the effort that is made in these conditions is commendable", since there are aspects "that can be improved, without a doubt".
"If you are going to brag about the previous management, save me a puppy," the regional president joked, who stressed that about 1,200 people are treated in emergencies every day.
For Campos, what the Ministry of Health knows how to do best is "public relations" and has expressed that the only data on the decrease in waiting lists that they can boast about is because they are stopping referrals to operations through a slowdown in diagnostic tests that lead to those waiting lists.
"With 800 million more and without a pandemic, there are 20,000 more people on the waiting lists while 8,200 wait for diagnostic tests. With a failure in primary care, collapsed emergencies and users who take 18 hours to be treated in the emergencies of the HUC," Campos lamented, who also referred to the decrease in vaccination, the "failure" in blood collection, labor conflicts or "failed" stabilization processes.
