A few years ago, public health, understood as the actions taken by political leaders to protect the health of citizens, was a field in which politics did not enter much. The general interest prevailed over partisan interests. But especially since the pandemic, this talent has disappeared, and citizens have become accustomed to disagreements, whether about masks, pots, vaccines or even healthy advice. And yesterday it was confirmed that it will not change, even though respiratory viruses, especially the flu, threaten to collapse the healthcare system.
Yesterday, the majority of the autonomous communities said no to forcing the use of masks in health centers throughout the territory for as long as the epidemic wave lasts. This refusal caused the Ministry of Health to assume in the evening that it will impose the obligation tomorrow, despite the discrepancies. This decision is taken by virtue of article 65 of the Cohesion and Quality of the National Health System law, which regulates the declaration of coordinated actions in public health and which “binds all the parties” included in it. Only Catalonia (which announced it on Friday) was clearly in favor, while others, such as Castilla-La Mancha (which has the highest incidence, with more than 1,700 cases per 100,000 inhabitants), left do the majority Coincidentally, the Government of Catalonia announced on Friday that it would declare this mandatory, but yesterday it had not yet published it in the DOGC. At yesterday’s Interterritorial Council, the other two communities that have decreed it mandatory, Valencia and Murcia, both governed by the PP, were not even in favor. Why did they act like this if they have imposed it on their region?
And to spin much more thinly, the Canary Islands, which were against it in this meeting, when they came out made the mask mandatory in health centers and hospitals.
And at the head of this political nonsense is Madrid, which does not even want to hear about obligations, despite the fact that community health centers have decreed the mandatory use of masks in an attempt to contain the epidemic.
And in the midst of this political confrontation, health professionals (doctors, nurses and other workers, as well as scientific societies) and patients are defending the obligation following the “extreme” tension situation that is experienced in health centers. Likewise, they ask that the vaccination campaigns be activated, which, this season, have been relegated to the background, a lack of initiative that partly explains the reduced vaccination coverage (barely 50%).
In yesterday’s plenary, little was discussed about one of the measures being studied by the Minister of Health, Mónica García, and which is intended to debureaucratize primary care, something that is particularly important in moments of “extreme” tension in the centers of health, they indicate to Sanitat. At the moment, it is only a proposal under study with other ministries, such as Social Security.
This is the “self-justification of the three-day absences so that those with a mild illness do not go to the doctor to request a leave report”, explained García. “It is inefficient to ask citizens not to go to primary care for a mild flu and, at the same time, to force them to go there to ask for proof of discharge. The measure would lead to the potential saving of hundreds of thousands of consultations a year and would meet a historic request from primary care professionals”, sources from the Ministry of Health point out.
A measure like this already applies in the United Kingdom (seven days), Portugal (three days), Sweden and Germany. In addition, something similar was done in Spain during the pandemic, although legally it was different due to the state of alarm.
The Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla, recalls that “it is a measure requested by scientific and professional societies in the field of primary care, many with an indestructible commitment to the defense of public health”. In this way, when a person cannot go to work due to mild respiratory symptoms, “this responsible statement is enough; it’s a request from family doctors”, he points out on his X account (formerly, Twitter).
The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, believes that the measure is an “occurrence”. Like her, most of the presidents of the PP.
