Tonight is three years ago; I can't believe it. My water broke at home and we ran to the University Hospital of the Canary Islands, from Garimba, a neighborhood of Guamasa. Nerves, emergencies, to the maternity area, clothes off, bracelets, ...
Tonight is three years ago; I can't believe it. My water broke at home and we ran to the University Hospital of the Canary Islands, from Garimba, a neighborhood of Guamasa. Nerves, emergencies, to the maternity area, clothes off, bracelets, chain, filling out documentation, contractions, first checks, very strong contractions, monitoring, changing stretchers, minutes, pains, races, nurses, midwives, gynecologists, it gets complicated, the baby's heart rate drops,? Suddenly many people run around the operating table where I am now, I try to breathe deeply so that a lot of oxygen reaches the child. Someone tries to pile up my abundant hair with something (then in the ICU I discover that it was a glove), another one incorporates me very quickly to be able to inject me, while another one brings me two documents that I must sign, and the anesthetist tries to do his job, they put a screen on my chest to be able to open, I think there are a dozen people circulating in a hurry, emergency cesarean section, my child is in a hurry, I tremble a lot, from cold, but more from uncertainty, I feel the warmth of a small blanket that the anesthetist places on my shoulders, with his affectionate look he tries to reassure me, they take the child to the room that is to my right, and immediately they bring him to me, the emergency pediatricians have seen him, they bring him close to my face and even with the mask on I try to kiss him, excited, without being able to move, how cute with his bandage cap, his little eyes.
From that moment on, for me who had never had to be hospitalized, the experience of feeling part of humanity was incredible. I was left with an intimate commitment to thank all the staff who helped me bring this precious creature into the world, each of the people who "ran" when I could not run like true friends do, and that despite the fact that they must do it every day, they treated me as if it were also a "unique" birth for them, with a level of tension and enthusiasm twinned with me at that moment that is impossible to forget.
I am completely convinced that this level of vital assistance must be inherent to human beings in society, to our duty of mutual support and survival, to our collective and social commitment, the only one capable of getting us ahead. And this can only be achieved in the environment of public health, which is a right of all, of all, I thank from the heart the invaluable work of the team that assisted me.
When a public service such as health, hospital and therapeutic care is privatized, the people are deprived of the possibility and the duty to take care of themselves without such essential work having to extract business benefits. Privatizing health means handing over this social duty of self-help to the infamous profit of the mercantile, private hands, turning the public duty and right to health into a business for a few, unattainable for a society that is becoming increasingly impoverished. At the same time, this trend of economic policy that economic neoliberalism is putting in place, at the same time, terribly undermines the working conditions of the squeezed workforce that manages it, more hours of work, lower wages, deterioration and reduction of hiring, of the general working conditions of the personnel of all groups and categories, cuts in health resources in general and therefore a dehumanization of the care that our health needs, preventing a large part of the population from accessing the right to health care.
The professionals who give their work every day to cover this social need now need our support, in a chain of favors and care, let us also take care of public health, and expel from the political decision-making scene those who intend to economically exploit the social need for health care, those who intend to create groups or ghettos of people excluded from this right based on their economic resources or their employment situation, or whether or not they have documentation that proves them as legal residents, or for any reason. Let us leave out of the scene those who try to manage the health system and health as a privilege from which to grant concessions and parcels of profits that generate a cut, those who do not understand that the need to take care of each other is a natural duty-need of our species, inherent to its survival, a human right, and its financing and budget must be a priority over useless items such as having troops in Afghanistan, financing the Royal House or generating tax amnesties for fortunes created with exploitation and evasion.
The general State budget for the year 2012 implied a reduction of 13.7% compared to the 2011 budget in health spending. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, for its part, determined a decrease of 21.2%, the financing of active employment policies was eliminated, the allocation of scholarships was reduced by 35.4%, 100% of aid to dependency, compared to the timid cuts of the Royal House of which we have not even known in detail its budget because such data has always been hidden in the PGE, or the simple decrease of 1.3% of the global military budget (all budgetary links, not only that of Defense). The cost of Spain's participation in the Afghan International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which NATO leads in the Central Asian country, has already exceeded 2.2 billion euros since the end of 2002, when the first Spanish troops were deployed. The cost of the military missions in which Spain participates abroad has risen from the 18 million that the Ministry of Defense spent in 1990 to the 861 that were allocated in 2011 and 769.08 million in 2012. From 1990 to 2012, the figure of 8090.83 million euros of budget liquidated by Spanish troops in military missions abroad has been reached.
In short, we have to be able to understand and explain the scope of all this, with all the tools that allow us to express ourselves, and give us the possibility of reversing this terrible trend, in favor of our condition as human beings, and in a certain way a commitment to the survival of our species and with the necessary fiber that allows us to inhabit a just world, prioritizing health and education, socializing care, in the face of this economy of barbarism.
Up with health and public education. Long live life.
