The Local Committee of Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-bc) in Haría has insisted on the need to open the Mala Health Center 24 hours a day with a Continuous Care service that offers guarantees to the population of northern Lanzarote and the island of La Graciosa, as the Parliament of the Canary Islands committed to through a Non-Legal Proposition approved in June 2022 and in the repeated initiatives carried out by the deputy Yoné Caraballo.
For Marcos Lemes, spokesperson for NC-bc and Health Councilor in the Haría City Council, "currently, the municipality of Haría has a population of 5,567 inhabitants and Teguise has 23,848 inhabitants, with an evident population increase in both municipalities in recent years that warns us of the need to reinforce essential public services in the northern region."
"To attend to the medical emergencies of the population of these municipalities outside the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., there is only the Valterra Health Center, which is also 36.8 km from Órzola, which means more than half an hour of travel, which in cases of vital urgency can mean the difference between living or dying," says Lemes, who recalls that "the Mala Clinic is located between the municipalities of Teguise and Haría at a distance of 18 km from the furthest point, which means halving the time to save a life."
NC-bc points out that if, in addition to the registered inhabitants, we add the tourists who are received and stay in the municipality of Haría and in the municipality of Teguise, especially in La Graciosa, the figures for people likely to need urgent healthcare increase even further, without the municipality having an advanced life support ambulance.
Thus, Deputy Yoné Caraballo will once again pressure the Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands to include this necessary demand in the next general budgets of the Canary Islands for the year 2026, reinforcing the health provision in Lanzarote, the only island in the archipelago that does not have a 24-hour Continuous Care Point in its northern area.
Therefore, with this data and after a summer filled with several health incidents, the Local Committee of NC-bc Haría insists on the need to open a 24-hour Continuous Care Point at the Mala Health Center, necessary for the care of the population of the north and to be able to offer itself as a safe tourist municipality.
"Because people's lives are not a matter of the service that saves them being profitable, it is a matter of citizens being able to live with the security of being able to have immediate healthcare if they need it," concludes Marcos Lemes.