The basic portfolio of services of the health system will expand in a year’s time the diseases detectable with the heel test that is done on newborns. Currently, the system finances the detection of seven endocrinometabolic diseases, which in a few days will be 11. But in the first quarter of next year, the number will double and reach 23. This was announced yesterday by the president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, during the visit to the Central University Hospital of Asturias (HUCA), in Oviedo.
“Neonatal screening is a powerful tool to identify some pathologies in the early stages”, he explained. “Strengthening this method of prevention is to improve the future of those who have just arrived in the world. Give them more and better years of life. And therefore, it is an obligation for those of us who want to strengthen public health”, justified the president.
And he explained that in the coming weeks the portfolio of perceptible diseases will be increased from the current seven to 11. In addition, today the Council of Ministers will examine the necessary steps “to double this number by the first quarter of the year what’s coming”, announced Sánchez.
“The goal – he assured – is to improve the well-being of our population. Make the system more sustainable. And homogenize this provision throughout the country, so that the health of Spaniards does not depend on their postal code or their income”. Currently, the common portfolio of services covers seven screenings, although there are autonomous communities that foresee up to forty in their own programs.
The Minister of Health, Mónica García, was more explicit at the time and advanced that before the end of the year the common portfolio of services will expand from 11 to 18 neonatal screenings to detect congenital diseases in newborns, which then will increase to 23 in the first quarter of 2025.
The main objective of the neonatal screening program for endocrinometabolic diseases is to identify and treat early the newborns affected by congenital diseases that meet the criteria for inclusion in the neonatal screening programs, they explain to Sanitat. Adequate healthcare intervention in the first moments of life reduces the morbidity, mortality and disabilities associated with these diseases.
The diseases that are part of the neonatal screening program for endocrine-metabolic diseases of the common portfolio of care services and that are offered to all newborns in Spain are, at the moment, seven: congenital hypothyroidism, phenylketonuria, cystic fibrosis, deficiency of medium-chain acyl-coenzyme A-dehydrogenase (MCADD), long-chain 3-hydroxy-acyl-coenzyme A-dehydrogenase (LCHADD), glutaric type I (GA-I) and sickle cell anemia. And the four that will soon be added are biotinidase deficiency, maple syrup-smelling urine disease, homocystinuria and congenital adrenal hyperplasia.
