One in every four births in Spain is performed by cesarean section, a “huge” figure that is far from the goal of the World Health Organization (WHO), which places it at 15% (only the Basque Country and Navarra achieve it). Caesarean sections are performed above this percentage in both public and private hospitals, but in the latter, the figure is almost 40%, 17.25% more than in public hospitals.
Because? According to the Federation of Associations in Defense of Public Health, because private centers do not have enough gynecologists for in-person care day and night, births are scheduled by cesarean section “to make planning easier,” they point out. To this we must add the economic benefits that this intervention has for the health center and the doctor who practices it.
Given this reality, this federation requests inspections from the health authorities to stop carrying out an intervention that has risks for women (among others, infection and damage to other organs, postpartum recovery is painful and much slower, between 4 and 8 weeks).
This is one of the data that appears in the report Specialized Care in the autonomous communities 2024, presented this morning by this entity and which shows that the collapse experienced by Primary Care has forced thousands of citizens to resort to Specialized Care. clearly. In fact, emergency services have suffered a significant increase in recent years due to the difficulties that citizens have in accessing health centers.
According to this report, which evaluates surgical interventions, the number of health professionals, pharmaceutical expenditure, among many other figures (obtained from the Ministry of Health and the autonomous communities), specialized care has much better “health” than primary and maintains its level of quality, something that citizens appreciate in successive satisfaction surveys.
Although they believe that there are two important factors that threaten it. On the one hand, referrals due to poor functioning of the Primary: “Referrals to specialized care consultations must be evaluated to assess their suitability. It is, therefore, important to provide Primary Care with the necessary means to reduce inappropriate referrals,” the report indicates.
And, second, the shortage of beds, which becomes even more acute with the number of beds that are not in operation: more than 14,100 (2022). ”The number of hospital beds must be significantly increased with the aim of achieving between 4.5 and 5 beds per 1,000 inhabitants, which means between 50,000 and 80,000 beds throughout the country. This increase must be carried out especially in medium and long-term beds, so that there is at least 1 bed per 1000 inhabitants.” At this moment, there are 154,479 beds installed.
