A little less than a month ago, former soccer player Juan Carlos Unzué, suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), disgraced politicians by his absence from a day in Congress on this terrible disease. That event was attended by patients who came there from all over Spain with their wheelchairs, their respirators and their cranes. “How many deputies are there in the room?” Unzué asked. Only five, the same five that were going to participate in a table of the day. “They will have more important things to deal with,” he said.

Those words resonated not only with the citizens, but also with a political class that was portrayed as if it were more concerned with its political quarrels than with improving people’s lives. And more of these patients, abandoned in a bureaucratic labyrinth to get (if they get it) some help, what they don’t have is time to waste.

Well, after that intervention, Congress has started: three bills to provide assistance to ALS patients, also including other serious neurodegenerative diseases, while the Government, through the Ministries of Health and Social Rights, has just announced a package of measures to accelerate the care of these patients.

Last night the PP got the support of all parties for its proposal (only focused on ALS patients). Of all. And next week it is more than foreseeable that the Junts proposal (for ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases), too. And that of the PSOE, which was presented yesterday, too. And with all of them, a law will come out that guarantees, once and for all, that these people and their families have the treatment, care and means necessary to live with dignity.

That is the commitment that was heard at the lectern of Congress by all parties, ashamed in a certain way for having left aside thousands of people with a horrific diagnosis completely abandoned, as was reflected in that day in Congress.

For their part, Health and Social Rights have agreed, among other issues, to create a rapid channel so that patients diagnosed with certain neurodegenerative diseases can access the services and benefits of the dependency system in the shortest possible time (now, the average is ten months; again, time they don’t have). And develop a specific program of benefits in the field of rehabilitation and physical medicine, something vital for these patients.

But nothing can be delayed. There is no time, they have no time.