Health care defenders demand shorter waits

The Marea Blanca , a plat­form de­fend­ing pub­lic health in Cat­alo­nia, yes­ter­day ad­dressed a let­ter to the gov­ern­ment de­mand­ing shorter wait­ing lists and the ces­sa­tion of the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of health care. In an event in Barcelona, which co­in­cided with protests tak­ing place through­out Spain for In­ter­na­tional Human Rights day, the plat­form de­nounced “health ser­vice wait­ing lists, which vi­o­late the rights to life, free­dom and se­cu­rity stip­u­lated in the UDHR”.

In a let­ter ad­dressed to the min­is­ter of econ­omy and fi­nance, Pere Aragonès, the plat­form states that “wait­ing lists kill and dam­age the health of those af­fected every day, as well as in­creas­ing in­equal­i­ties”.

The mea­sures de­manded in­clude en­sur­ing pa­tients’ ac­cess to “ur­gent con­sul­ta­tions with spe­cial­ists within 10 days, ur­gent di­ag­nos­tic tests and can­cer surg­eries within 30 days and GP vis­its within 48 hours”.

The con­cen­tra­tion was at­tended by other plat­forms, in­clud­ing the Marea Pen­sion­ista (who protest every Mon­day at the Uni­ver­sity square) and Élite Taxi (who helped to bring el­derly peo­ple to Sant Jaume square).

To the dis­may of the or­ga­niz­ers, how­ever, only about two hun­dred peo­ple made it to the demon­stra­tion.