The PSOE of Lanzarote has denounced the extreme seriousness of the information known by the party which confirms a prolonged situation of lack of medical and healthcare staff in the Amavir Tías and Amavir Haría residences, a deficiency that ended up generating a scenario of care insecurity incompatible with the attention that resident people deserve.
According to the information known by the PSOE, those prolonged periods without medical or healthcare personnel, which the Socialist Group had already denounced, caused that, at certain times, unqualified personnel found themselves obliged to supply or administer medication without due medical supervision, with the consequent risk to the residents' health. That situation came to cause side effects in some of them and, in a specific case, convulsions in a resident, facts that the Cabildo knew.
The spokesperson for the Socialist Group in the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Ariagona González, has warned that “what we are learning about is of enormous gravity, because we are not talking about an isolated incident, but about the consequences of having allowed for too long that socio-health centers operated without sufficient medical or health personnel”.
“It cannot be consented that a residence for the elderly goes through long periods without a doctor and without sanitary personnel, and that this lack of coverage ends up shifting functions towards unqualified personnel, forcing them to assume tasks for which they are not enabled and putting the health of the residents at risk,” González pointed out.
"A chain of failures that cannot be minimized"
The socialist spokesperson emphasizes that these facts evidence a chain of failures that cannot be minimized, because they fully affect the safety of especially vulnerable people. “When essential professionals are missing in a center, we are not facing a simple organizational problem. We are facing a breakdown of care guarantees, and that has direct consequences on the life and health of people,” she affirmed.
In that sense, Ariagona González recalled that the prolonged absence of medical and healthcare personnel not only deteriorates the quality of the service, but also opens the door to situations of enormous risk, such as those that have now been accredited. “The lack of medical supervision in the administration of treatments is not a minor issue. It is a very serious anomaly that can lead, as already happened, to side effects in residents and even to episodes as serious as seizures.”
From the PSOE of Lanzarote, they consider it especially serious that the Cabildo knew about this situation and, even so, has not offered until now clear public explanations about the measures adopted, nor about the responsibilities derived from events of this magnitude.
The Cabildo knew the situation
"The most worrying thing is that the Cabildo knew it. It knew that these deficiencies were occurring, it knew the risk they posed, and it also knew the consequences that were already affecting the residents. And, given that, what was to be expected was an immediate, forceful, and transparent action," denounced the socialist spokesperson.
The Socialist Group insists that it cannot be normalized that care in social and health centers depends on improvisation or the overload of workers who end up assuming functions that do not correspond to them. “We are talking about residences, about elderly people, about dependent people, about people who need care and guarantees, not about patches or emergency exits,” González added.
The PSOE of Lanzarote will demand the Cabildo to explain since when it had knowledge of the prolonged lack of medical and healthcare personnel in Amavir Tías and Amavir Haría, what measures it adopted to correct that situation, why unqualified personnel were allowed to administer medication without medical supervision, and what concrete actions were carried out after the side effects suffered by several residents became known.
“What happened is unacceptable. It is not just about poor management, but a situation that compromises the safety of residents and should never have occurred. Socio-health care cannot be sustained by the absence of professionals, improvisation, and the silence of the responsible administration”, concluded Ariagona González.