Around 130 women from Granadilla currently benefit from a pioneering service in Tenerife: a specialized and comprehensive care center for people suffering from fibromyalgia (a condition that causes pain throughout the body), chronic fatigue or breast cancer, as well as for women masectomized. The main objective of this free resource launched by the City Council of Granadilla de Abona in El Médano is to offer a therapeutic service to deal with the aforementioned pathologies through rehabilitation.
Two physiotherapists, a psychologist and an administrative one are in charge of providing a service that offers individual sessions, in which 30 users join each week, and group activities, with an average of 20 participants in which around thirty people are involved. women every week.
The methodology applied covers three areas in order to improve the quality of life of users: physical, psychological and social. The activities include various workshops, physiotherapeutic rehabilitation actions at sea during the summer months, walks throughout the year and the celebration of the world days of fibromyalgia and breast cancer. In addition, users receive advice from the administrative point of view to obtain, for example, disability reports or assistance from associations that protect their rights.
In the psychological area, time management is worked on, the improvement of habits such as sleeping and eating, emotional control strategies, ways of coping with family conflict, stress management, as well as delving into concepts such as adaptation to change, managing uncertainty, and preventing anxiety and depression. Family members of users can also access these services.
But the great novelty in the psychological field is the neurological education of pain. It is a project that Sara Bote, the psychologist who provides her service at the El Médano Specialized Care Center, has begun to apply. “It consists of understanding how pain works and how we can modulate it in our daily lives based on, for example, how we manage stress, with the aim of having greater control over chronic pain such as fibromyalgia or migraine” , explained the psychologist to this newspaper, who described this innovative method, which is already beginning to be applied in public health in the Basque Country, as “almost miraculous”.
Sara Bote, who works in coordination with the center’s two physiotherapists, recalled that conditions such as fibromyalgia must be approached with a three-pronged perspective: mental health, physical health care (with special attention to rest and nutrition) and the social sphere, “connecting people in a similar situation”.
The budget allocated by the City Council to this municipal resource exceeds 100,000 euros per year. For the mayor, José Domingo Regalado, “health is the best investment that can be made for the benefit of the population”, and highlighted the work carried out by professionals to offer a comprehensive service and specialized care. The councilor insisted that “the commitment to the Health Promotion area is permanent.”
For her part, María de la O Gaspar, councilor responsible for the management of Social Services and Health Promotion, described the provision of the center as “essential” for the social welfare and health of the people of Granada.
