Some professionals at the Primary Care Emergency Center of Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelonès) have said that enough is enough. They report that they have been suffering from a cockroach infestation in the center for more than a year and a half and that they are not prepared to tolerate it any longer. To show the scale of the problem, they explain that in the morning shift last Thursday they killed around 80 insects. They also claim that patients “also kill them, that some of them have filed complaints and that, despite this, the Catalan Institute of Health (ICS) does not act. In “all this time”, they underline, the ICS has carried out “3 or 4 actions that continue to be patched: they refuse to fumigate”. As a result of this reality, some workers have taken leave.
They explain that the problem (mainly located in the radiology service, located on the -1 floor of the building) appeared just over a year and a half ago, when they detected several insects at each shift. After a short time there were already five; later 7, 15… and so on until reaching the current situation: “In the morning shift on Maundy Thursday we killed 80”. The workers with whom La Vanguardia has been able to speak explain that the cockroaches, which “appear everywhere”, run in their air “through the service and among the patients”. They claim that the company “refuses to fumigate” and alleges that “it is very expensive to close the center for two days” and that, in addition, it can be “harmful to the patients”. Instead, he has carried out “3 or 4 actions” that have turned out to be innocuous: “Now they cover a casket; now a slot…â€
This problem has been dragging on for so long that some professionals have decided to take leave due to stress. “You will work with a lot of anxiety. You’re taking an x-ray on a patient and you see several insects coming off the ceiling”, complains one of them. “I don’t think we workers of a public health service should be killing cockroaches”.
Sources of Health, for their part, explain to this newspaper that in 2022 “various actions” were carried out to control cockroaches in the center which had some success and that thanks to them “it was possible to control the plague”.
They point out that the bulk was done during Holy Week and that now “a very significant reduction in the plague has been observed”.
Some of the affected workers acknowledge that the number of insects has decreased, but they stress that there are still some. This is what they informed the managers of the Occupational Health Unit of Barcelonès Nord of the ICS, with whom they met yesterday. “The proposals they made to us?, this is the song of the angry. That when they can they will clean the drains and cover holes and that eradicating the plague is very difficult”. By the way, nothing to fumigate. “They explained that in 2004 they did it at the Joan XXIII hospital in Tarragona and there were staff who became contaminated, and they decided that they would not fumigate any more”.
