The Association of Bodies of the Penitentiary Institutions Administration (ACAIP), together with the General Union of Workers (UGT), the majority prison union, denounces through a press release the "deterioration of the penitentiary health system" and warns that it "is beginning to have consequences that are visible both inside and outside the prisons" that depend on the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions. Thus, it adds that "there are not enough doctors to care for the 494 prisoners of the Tahíche penitentiary center".
The union states that, "according to the latest data from the Transparency Portal, the number of doctors to care for an inmate population of almost 500 prisoners is two of the five that should exist." According to these data, at the national level, the deficit "exceeds 67% and a ratio between doctor and inmate of 3.46 per thousand, which contrasts with the 6.66 per thousand that Spanish prisons had in 2014".
In this sense, it adds that "a first logical consequence" of this lack of care in prisons is "the increase in the number of outings for health care abroad." The union states that these outings "consume a large amount of resources since, to carry it out, it is necessary to coordinate the prison with the state security forces and bodies and the health services, so as to ensure both the transfer and the time spent in the assigned hospital, which entails, in turn, the prioritization of this care over that of the general population, regardless of the severity of the same".
Lack of doctors during the summer
To this must be added that during the vacation periods of prison officials during the summer "either in the morning or in the afternoon, there is no doctor present in the penitentiary center to attend to emergencies".
This lack of doctors also translates into "problems inside the centers, where 30% of inmates suffer from some type of mental pathology and there is a high number of chronic diseases such as HIV, diabetes or hepatitis." The absence of adequate care causes "regimental incidents and non-compliance with sanctions due to the inability to assess the clinical situation of the inmate due to the lack of a doctor".
ACAIT-UGT warns that the inmate population "has needs different from the general population that must be addressed according to the reality of the day-to-day of the penitentiary centers." To conclude, it demands "that solutions be provided both from the central administration and from the different autonomies that should have assumed the health competences as promulgated by the Health Cohesion Law of 2003".
