The Canary Islands Association of Neuropsychiatry (ACN) demands that the Government of the Canary Islands and the Cabildo arbitrate a political and economic agreement that makes the commissioning of an assisted living facility in Lanzarote viable to care for people with disabilities due to severe mental disorders. Therefore, they request that an extraordinary meeting be convened within the framework of the Insular Council for Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Community Action of Lanzarote or, failing that, they call on political forces to raise and approve a parliamentary initiative with a financial sheet and execution schedule that includes the demands of patients, families, and professionals.
This request is in addition to that of the group for the defense of the psychiatric patient El Cribo, which also denounced in a press release issued last week that there are no residential and care centers in Lanzarote for the most severely psychiatric patients on the island. El Cribo, together with other socio-health associations and residents of the island, joined the demonstration called last Saturday, March 15, for the improvement of healthcare.
Likewise, the Canary Islands Association of Neuropsychiatry requests that "at least" the accommodation places planned for 2008 in the Disability Care Plan (PAD) in Lanzarote be implemented immediately, specifically 19 places of supervised accommodation. In addition, they demand that the next evaluative cut of the Disability Care Plan be sized according to the demographic growth experienced on the island and the percentages of people with severe mental disorders.
In this way, they want to "demand effective equal opportunities for all the inhabitants of the Canary Islands." They denounce that although 10 years ago the political authorities promised to create an Assisted Residence with 35 places, to date "nothing at all" has been put in place. Thus, they point out that this "is leading to an unsustainable climate in the care of these patients, encouraging them to occupy acute beds in the General Hospital, to enter and leave through the emergency services, to be left on the street, or to be abandoned to their fate."
Some, those who are "luckier," are transferred to Gran Canaria where the Canary Islands Health Service is paying for limited places. "This last measure is scarce" - they point out from the association - "because socio-family rehabilitation programs are not carried out and the patients who are sent to Las Palmas run the risk of remaining "isolated" in that center forever, suffering a process of deterioration and institutionalization like that of the old asylums."
Thus, the association claims that it is the "duty of the public authorities to guarantee the equity of social and health benefits to all citizens of the Archipelago, wherever they live."
