On the morning of this Thursday, the Coordinator for the defense of the Insular Hospital has been constituted, under the motto Save the Insular Hospital of Lanzarote. Several groups on the island have adhered to the manifesto proposed by Intersindical Canaria, a trade union organization with an absolute majority in the Works Council of the health center. The objective of this coordinator is to become "the germ of a space for social struggle open to future mobilizations" and to the adherence of all those trade union, social organizations, political parties and the citizenry in general, who advocate for the defense of public health and socio-health services.
The coordinator states that the current Government of Coalición Canaria and Partido Popular, "through the path of accomplished facts, intend to end the center by means of the lure of an alleged transfer to actually amortize positions and workers, manifesting a hostile attitude towards the elderly" and in a center that is a reference in the Spanish State for comprehensive care in Geriatrics and that has the only teaching unit for this specialty in the Canary Islands.
The organizations that have signed this manifesto have committed to working jointly to ensure that the Insular Hospital remains "an accessible, modern, and fully operational public socio-health resource." At the same time, they have committed to "placing the health of the population, of our elderly, and of geriatrics above partisan, business, or circumstantial interests."
In this document they have invited "all social entities, in particular, and all citizens, in general, to join this commitment to guarantee the continuity of our veteran hospital as an essential pillar of the island's health and social-health system."
The organizations that make up this coordinator have defended that it is time for the Cabildo de Lanzarote, the Canarian Health Service and the Canarian Government, "abandon the policy of empty and imprecise commitments with the future of the center, committing to certain and inexcusable measures", endowing the maintenance and renovation of the Insular Hospital with a sufficient project and budget and "shortening legal deadlines through the Urgency route as it is considered a public necessity of the first order".
Thus, they have committed to promote and to demand from the institutions:
1. Recognition of the strategic role of the Insular Hospital within the Canarian public healthcare and social-healthcare system.
2. Guarantee the public ownership and management of the Insular Hospital of Lanzarote, without outsourcing or disguised privatizations, such as could occur through the closure of the current facilities and the amortization of users and workers, masking it with an initial transfer to the Doctor José Molina de Orosa Hospital.
3. Maintenance of the Hospital's healthcare activity and implementation of a comprehensive plan for rehabilitation, modernization, and adaptation of the infrastructure, to be undertaken in phases, simultaneously carrying out the works with the healthcare activity and adapted to the real needs of the population.
4. Provide the center with sufficient, stable, and earmarked funding, that allows maintaining and expanding services.
5. Active participation of the legal representation of the workers and municipal corporations in the planning and evaluation of the services.
6. Immediate reinforcement of staff, with job stability and dignified conditions that prevent the flight of professionals.
In this vein, they have indicated that the situation of the Insular Hospital "is not a local labor or administrative problem", but directly affects "the cohesion, equity, and sustainability of the entire public health and social-health system of the Canary Islands, putting at serious risk things like:
- The continuity of socio-health care in Lanzarote.
- The continuity of teaching activity in Geriatrics for all of the Canary Islands.
- The response capacity of the Canary Islands health system in the face of emergencies, demand peaks, and chronic needs.
- The equality of rights between capital islands and non-capital islands.
- The stability of staff, whose overload and precarization compromise the quality of care.
- The trust of citizens in a public system that must be a guarantor of social cohesion.