Cavalcade of cars leads protest at hospital cuts

According to Carmen Poyatos, General Workers Union delegate at the Son Llatzer hospital in east Palma, the caravan left at 8am yesterday morning from the city's hippodrome heading towards the Joan March hospital where it linked up with workers who had just finished the night shift.

The cavalcade then set out in the direction of the Avenidas, led by a car topped with a makeshift cardboard coffin with the words “public health” written on the side.

The cars, noisily sounding their horns, and with passengers leaning out of the windows waving union banners, were later joined by a solitary motorcycle. Having encircled the General Hospital on the next stage of its protest, the cavalcade advanced on the Balearic Parliament buildings where the regional government was in weekly session yesterday.

Poyatos said that workers at the two hospitals under threat of closure as well as staff from other health centres in the Balearics fail to understand the government's plans to close the Joan March and the General Hospital, whilst at the same time aiming to open up the ageing facilities at the old Son Dureta hospital in Palma. “The government can see that the two hospitals they want to close are in good working order and that they will have to spend considerable sums on making Son Dureta operational again,” said Poyatos.

Meanwhile, Balearic Health Minister Carmen Castro yesterday hit back at travel agencies in the region who said they would no longer issue tickets to people who needed to travel for health purposes because the government had failed to pay them back invoices amounting to a quarter of a million euros. “The Balearic government is paying these bills as quickly as it can,” said Castro. “It remains a key responsibility for us to pay for travel for those people who don't have their own resources to get to the hospital which will give them adequate treatment.” Castro's predecessor in the previous Socialist coalition government, Vicenç Thomas, claimed the Partido Popular government wants to do away with subsidising patient travel.