SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Feb. 18 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Health care in the Canary Islands, with some 13 million foreign tourists a year — pre-pandemic figures — and many foreign residents, especially on the islands of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura and the south of Tenerife and Gran Canaria, often becomes a problem head for health professionals due to the diversity of nationalities and the difficulty in making themselves understood.
“Today a Russian citizen is coming to see how we do it and if we are lucky,” a doctor commented a few days ago in a health center in Tenerife, a common scene in many health centers and large hospitals on the islands, where medical care for foreigners continues to present difficulties.
“Maspalomas is the UN, there is everything here, a consultation with which you do not know how to understand yourself is horrible, it delays a lot and the patient loses security,” Elena Pérez, one of the spokespersons for the Association of Care Physicians, tells Europa Press. Primary School of the Canary Islands (AMAPCAN), which provides services in the south of Gran Canaria.
He appreciates that on some occasions language students appear in internships “and it helps a lot”, and on others they use the ‘Mi Tradassan’ application, developed by the Canary Islands Health Service at the initiative of a rabbit nurse and which allows in up to six languages: Spanish, English, French, German, Chinese and Arabic.
It contains a list of some 700 expressions per language and more than 4,000 audio files and can be used by both staff and patients. “The ‘app’ is fine but it falls short, perhaps you could take a tour and expand it by specialties,” she says.
In his case, he comments that around half of the patients he sees in Maspalomas are foreigners, above all residents of the island, mainly Germans and Italians, and highlights, for example, that many Germans, after thirty years living in the Canary Islands “they don’t know Spanish, not even English”.
However, he comments that the patient “is obliged” to bring a companion to be translated and in fact, there is a paid translator service for them to come accompanied and he understands that with the “deficits” that exist in the Canarian public health Public money should be allocated to this service, even though the islands are a first-class tourist destination.
ARABIC TRANSLATORS IN CENTERS FOR MINORS
Pérez does not see bad that there is a service “but that it is a charge” for foreigners and it does open the door to having Arabic translators in the centers for unaccompanied migrant minors because “it is very sad” not being able to serve the boys well , and many arrive with mental problems due to the harshness of the boat trip. “No one knows Arabic, it is a priority issue,” he details.
A Spanish-German neurologist at La Candelaria Hospital recalls that calls from colleagues to help in the health care of German patients are common, on any floor and especially in the Emergency Room.
“I don’t care, we’re here to help each other, but many times you stop doing your own work to lend a hand and you get delayed,” he says, highlighting the difficulty of an examination and the preparation of a clinical history for a patient without master their language.
SERVICE THROUGH THE MINISTRY OF TOURISM
Levy Cabrera, general secretary of the Tenerife medical union, admits that there are hospital admissions of foreigners “which are a problem” and recalls how in a hospital in Gran Canaria, with a Russian citizen, they managed to save the situation with a caretaker who had knowledge of the language.
“Many times you look for life and you manage,” he says, on many occasions with the ‘Google translator’ as an inseparable co-worker.
He points out that the Spanish health system offers many services that are not provided in other countries, such as the co-payment of drugs in the Emergency Room or before ‘Brexit’, oncological treatments for people who were not covered by the British health system as they are repeat offenders in their risk factors .
Cabrera affirms that in the Emergency Room, “and almost out of favor”, sometimes the consulates send an interpreter although they are not obliged, while acknowledging that there is also no obligation to attend to a patient in their own language.
“When it’s urgent, we try to solve it as best we can,” he indicates, although he points out that in Primary Care they were “aware of the problem” and in the case of the health centers of Los Cristianos and Adeje, in the south of Tenerife, there is a doctor specialized in treating foreigners with knowledge of languages.
As a proposal, he proposes that through the Ministry of Tourism – not charged to the health budget – a telephone translation service be launched at the disposal of health centers and hospitals “to help” if necessary .
