06/04/2013 00:00
TW
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STAFF REPORTER

PALMA
THE opposition Partido Popular has warned that 4'000 surgical interventions and 24'000 consultations will be affected annually if the closure of the two departments in the Hospital General goes ahead.

The management of the hospital, GESMA; intend to close five surgical theatres and the outpatients department this July.
Aina Castillo, the PP's spokeswoman on health, called on Balearic Health Minister Vicenç Thomàs to reflect on the situation so that the same “mistake” isn't made as was in 2002 when the surgical block of the hospital was closed down.

She said that if GESMA went ahead with the closure, it would mean 10 percent less operating theatres in Majorca. At the moment there are 51, the five in the Hospital General, 17 in Son Dureta, 12 in Son Llàtzer, six in Inca and seven in Manacor.

Castillo said that the PP would pursue the issue in the Balearic Parliament through a series of questions and motions to find out where the Government intends to move the operations that are currently being carried out in the Hospital General.

Castillo pointed out that the Executive's plan to move these operations to Inca was not viable. “This centre cannot absorb all that activity and the consequences will be a rise in waiting lists and lower morale among the professionals working there,” she said. “We're talking about a serious proposal that is not in the interests of public health,” she added.
Castillo, the former Minister for Health in the islands, recalled that in 2003 the PP Government had reactivated surgical interventions at the hospital.

She said that between 2003 and 2007, the number of operations taking place at the hospital rose from 812 to 4'766.
She added the PP Government had made good use of human resources at the hospital.
Castillo said that 90 percent of operations at the Hospital General were performed on patients that did not require an overnight stay and did not have to be admitted. She added that specialists of the hospital itself, as well as the public health system, were able to perform many of these operations.

Castillo said that the Balearics had reduced waiting lists and were now only behind Castilla-La Mancha in terms of the shortest average wait. However, she said that in the last year, these lists had grown 14 percent. “We cannot take a step backwards,” she said.
Castillo said that the decision of the current Government was “turning its back on society and not taking political consensus into account”.
She said that a measure of this importance “could not be adopted like this”.
She said some of the other consequences of the Government's decision would be the closure of the clinic for sufferers of chronic pain, as well as the ending of the dental service for children with disabilities.

Castillo added that the closure of the five operating theatres in the Hospital General is the equivalent of closing the Mateu Orfila hospital in Minorca or the Can Misses in Ibiza.

She also rejected the Government's attitude that the Hospital General should dedicate itself exclusively to the public health system and that private operations “were not compatible, when it is”. “It's quite a feeble argument,” she said.