The deputy of Lanzarote and La Graciosa and island president of Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-BC), Yoné Caraballo, has rejected the reasons given by the Ministry of Health managed by Coalición Canaria (CC) to reject the psychiatric subunit in the emergency room of the Dr. Molina Orosa Hospital.
Last Friday, Caraballo again brought to the health committee of the Parliament of the Canary Islands "the need to provide Lanzarote with this subunit, given the high number of cases of Lanzarote residents, family members and users, who have found themselves in unpleasant situations when arriving at the hospital emergency room for mental health reasons."
Thus, Caraballo insisted that "it is not possible to continue enduring the situation suffered in the emergency room of the Molina Orosa with psychiatric patients crowded together with patients with common pathologies and fathers and mothers with children." Along with this, he pointed out that "the response times for patients arriving with psychiatric outbreaks are eternal, reaching more than 12 or 24 hours until they are diagnosed by a specialist."
The Canarianist questioned the reasons given by the Minister of Health, Esther Monzón, to "continue denying this reality in Lanzarote." For the head of Canarian health, "the data of patients arriving at the emergency room for mental health reasons are not sufficient to implement this subunit." On the other hand, for Caraballo, "this is not a weighty reason given that, on average and according to official data, there are between 3 and 4 patients per day, a figure not negligible if compared with other pathologies that need a specialist on call and that sometimes do not have patients to treat."
At the same time, the deputy compared the management being done at the University Hospital of the Canary Islands in Tenerife, where the center's management has implemented this subunit "with good success", improving the quality of care for users of the island; with the one carried out at the Dr. Molina Orosa Hospital where "the management denies such a need."
"There is no one more blind than the one who does not want to see. And the worst thing is that this blindness is putting Lanzarote patients in serious danger, who have the same care rights as the rest of the Canarians," says Yoné Caraballo, who warns that from "NC-BC new pressure actions are being developed to ensure that the mental health subunit becomes a reality in Lanzarote."
