“Health in Tenerife It is worse than twenty years ago with double the budget than in 2003 ». is the balance of Canarian Coalition four years of the PSOE’s mandate in this area. The phrase is shared by the nationalist candidate for Government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijoand the candidate for the presidency of the Cabildo, Rosa Dávila. They denounce that the Island is “in the queue” on the waiting lists due to “socialist mismanagement” in the island and regional administrations.
CC criticizes that “with 1,000 million euros more in the budget, the data is worse than two decades ago,” and that “the current managers have wasted the available resources.” Dávila evidences “the lousy socialist management” in which the people of Tenerife have to “wait a year for a colonoscopy” and that “not a single social health place has been built in this mandate.”
Clavijo and Dávila were accompanied by members of the island list Juan Acosta –Primary Care doctor and mayor of Santa Úrsula, number 5– and Eulalia García –former general director of Dependency and Disability, who is at number 4–. Clavijo affirmed that “the socialists have increased the problems because, despite having more funds, they lack planning and have not taken professionals into account.” He considers that “they have not been concerned that the system revolves around the patient.” This chaos, he valued, “has been reflected in the instability of those responsible for Health, since three councilors and five directors of the Canary Health Service have passed (SCS)”.
87%
endoscopic waiting list
In the chapter on endoscopies, the Canary Islands Coalition denounces that “7,253 Tenerife men and women are waiting for this diagnosis, 87.6% of all the Canaries” on the list.
The nationalists indicated that in June 2019 there were 24,862 people on the waiting list and “in December 2022 there were 9,694 more (34,556), an increase of 39%, in the autonomous community and 41.95% in Tenerife.” They sentence: “These are the highest waiting list figures since 2003, 34,556 people, only comparable with those of December 2016, whose number amounted to 34,329.”
For Rosa Dávila “it is inexplicable” that “54.2% of the waiting list is in Tenerife”, well above “what would correspond to it due to the weight of the population, since it represents 42.7% of that of Canary Islands». He listed the surgical, which in June 2019 was at 13,205 people, and in December 2022 it had increased by more than 5,000 to reach 18,744.
Dávila stressed that “the most worrying data occurs in the diagnostic tests”, thus, in endoscopies, “7,253 Tenerife residents are waiting, 87.6% of the Canaries”. An average wait in the Archipelago is 251 days, and in Tenerife 332 at the HUC, “where the test that can determine whether or not you have cancer takes almost a year,” warned Dávila.
The situation of hospitals “is chaotic” and, Dávila summarized, “the solution is not to remove and add charges, but to study the best organization system, have professionals, and improve infrastructures.”
Juan Acosta believes it is necessary to “promote prevention measures in Primary Care”. They are encompassed in five axes: developing the Law of Social Services of the Canary Islands; reinforce socio-health coordination; promote action plans and programs for the elderly with the rescue of Ansina; care and protection for victims of all forms of violence against women and have Pharmacy offices to alleviate the saturation of health centers.
Eulalia García pointed out that “in hospitals there are many older people who occupy sanitary beds and should not be there.” She concluded: “Of the 589 people in this situation in Canarian hospitals, 200 are in those of Tenerife.”
