Coalición Canaria Arrecife has requested the president of the Canary Islands Government, Ángel Víctor Torres, for the "immediate dismissal" of the manager of the Lanzarote Health Services, José Luis Aparicio, and the island director of the Health Area, Noelia Umpiérrez, "for their manifest incompetence to respond to the demand of the residents of Argana who since 2019 were expecting to have a health center in 2023 as they had been promised."
The local secretary, Jacobo Lemes, has denounced that the Health officials of Lanzarote “have ignored and laughed” at the residents of Argana and Maneje with respect to the future health center of the city.
Lemes made these statements after recent statements by Jose Luis Aparicio himself postponing the possible start of the works to 2025 and "almost four years after he refused to enable a provisional office and assumed the commitment that the new health center would be available in three years."
In 2019, Lemes explained, “they publicly assured that in three years the necessary infrastructure would be available, but now they announce that the works will begin in 2025, laughing at the residents and the health needs of the city.”
Lemes points out that "he has not been the only one to break his promises. The regional Minister of Health, Blas Trujillo, announced in the Plenary Session of the Parliament of the Canary Islands held on April 27, 2021, the creation of two new basic health zones in Arrecife, which would be added to the current two and with which "a response will be given to the important population growth of this capital municipality, which will entail the creation and reform of Primary Care infrastructures."
The nationalist candidate, Echedey Eugenio, recalled that, after the entry into force of the Land Law in 2017, there is a procedure that, through the approval of the general interest, enables the immediate contracting of the project and work. "There is no problem of bureaucracy, but of commitment and desire to work", he added.
Eugenio has announced that he will ask his candidates for the Government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, for the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort, and for the Parliament of the Canary Islands, Migdalia Machín, respectively, “to assume and sign specifically with the citizens of Argana, Maneje and with those of Arrecife, in general, the commitment to activate this route so that in the first year of the mandate the project is drafted and, in the second, the works of such a demanded infrastructure begin.
The nationalist candidate has been forceful in expressing that “the situation of the residents is unsustainable and the authorities must take concrete measures to solve this problem immediately.”
From Coalición Canaria they remember "that the construction of a health center in Argana Alta is a historical demand of the residents of the populous neighborhood, who urgently require the construction of a health center appropriate to the needs of its resident population in which up to fifty-seven nationalities coexist, the nucleus of greatest density of the capital of Lanzarote, comparable to that represented jointly by the municipalities of Teguise, Tinajo and Haría."
"The reality of the health situation suffered by the residents of this capital enclave is so worrying that, according to a diagnosis made by the Biosphere Reserve and the Data Center of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, in Argana Alta there is a high risk of vulnerability and social exclusion, so prioritizing the intervention at the local level in the neighborhood requires the decentralization of services, which implies the need to launch a plan to strengthen the basic network of social services and the creation and support of specialized devices of local scope that enable prevention and protection tasks," they add from the formation.
Eugenio states that "with everything, the situation of the residents is even more serious if we take into account that the growth of Arrecife, whose population already reaches the figure of 65,000 inhabitants, has meant that Argana Alta, surrounded by large road infrastructures that prevent adequate access of pedestrians to the rest of the capital, has been practically disconnected from other areas of the city."
Finally, they remember that "at present, the residents, both from Argana and Maneje, a neighborhood that also has a high population density, must go to the Titerroy Health Center which, due to this kind of domino effect, is also in a situation of collapse and, as a consequence, health professionals cannot provide the quality primary care they would like, at the level that citizens deserve."
