The geriatric doctor of the Hospital Insular de Lanzarote Blanca Torres intervened this Monday morning on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero to talk about the dismantling of the geriatric center on the island after the Government of the Canary Islands has declared as an emergency the works of the annex space to the Hospital Doctor José Molina Orosa, where patients will be transferred after the Insular is emptied.
"We are not asking for more than what we already have," said the geriatric doctor, who added that if the Hospital Insular building is not the adequate space, a project should be created to have a monographic geriatric hospital, but that this unique center does not end up becoming "a service". "Being just another service is equivalent to saying that the elderly will be just another one," she indicated.
At the same time, she explained that if they become part of an area of Molina Orosa, they would lose their own budget and the management of their own finances, but by being a Service, they are subject to the same deadlines as the rest of the units. She said the same regarding the staff, who are currently qualified to work with the elderly. "We will no longer have medical direction, we will not have Nursing direction, and I don't know if our administrative staff will continue to make appointments," she indicated.
Torres explained that during the visit to the multipurpose building where the Canary Islands Executive wants to transfer the patients from the Hospital Insular, she noticed "deficiencies" in the facilities, despite the attempts of the Director of the Health Area of Lanzarote, Erasmo García, to present it as "a new house, with everything beautiful".
For example, in her intervention on the morning show Buenos días, Lanzarote, Torres indicated that among the staff there are still doubts about the capacity of the plasterboard walls to support the parallel bars that patients use for rehabilitation exercises. "We don't know to what extent the parallel bars will hold for doing exercises [...], to what extent the handrails will hold for the elderly to walk," she continued.
Regarding the continuity of the intermediate care service, where a "functional recovery" of patients is pursued, she has pointed out that animation is very important, "that the family comes, that there are common spaces, socializing." However, she has indicated that "we are going to lose that because there is no dining room." Thus, she has agreed with clinical psychologist Silvia Camino, who has denounced in a video that the elderly will end up eating alone in their room.
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