The deputy of the islands of Lanzarote and La Graciosa and insular president of Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-BC), Yoné Caraballo, demanded last Friday to the Minister of Health, Esther Monzón, the study that, according to the government, supports that the best option to install the medicalized helicopter in the eastern islands is the island of Fuerteventura.
According to Caraballo, the documents that the Ministry of Health itself has sent him when urging them to make the study public, "are a real shame." "Half a page without technical data and without any justification that indicates why Fuerteventura has been chosen as a permanent base, ignoring the data of transfers and the equidistance that Lanzarote maintains with respect to Gran Canaria, La Graciosa and the island of Majorera itself," says the Canarian.
For the Lanzarote deputy, "this attitude of the Ministry of Health only shows that there are no technical feasibility reports, but rather they have been based on a political decision, skipping the parliamentary mandate and the more than 40,000 signatures of the Lanzarote society that demands the medicalized helicopter."
"The government has a parliamentary mandate that urges it to carry out the necessary studies to locate a permanent base for this health transport in Lanzarote. We are in the middle of the legislature and it seems that they are letting this demand die," says Caraballo, who recalls that it was the president of the government himself, Fernando Clavijo, who in 2022 said that "the logical thing is that each island had a helicopter."
"Well, it is not that Lanzarote lacks a medicalized helicopter; it is that it is the only island that does not have any type of aircraft, neither medicalized nor rescue," argues Yoné Caraballo.
"They treat us like fools when we are the third island that contributes the most to the Canary Islands treasury; the third island in population; the third island in tourist arrivals; and we have more referrals to reference hospitals than any other non-capital island. Are these not enough data to treat the people of Lanzarote with the same importance as the other islands?" said Yoné Caraballo.
