2023-08-18 10:29:08
Updated Friday, August 18, 2023 – 10:29
DREAMSTIME
The evident inefficiencies of our National Health System (SNS) have jeopardized one of the vital pillars for social cohesion and the welfare state, dragging down patients and professionals. More than four million people on waiting lists, primary care collapsed, a system overwhelmed by the pandemic and a society that looks expectantly towards this ruling class far removed, at times, from the pain of the street. At this hour, what more legitimate concern could our politicians have than the best possible health care?
The light has changed in this post-electoral scenario, in which tension has swept away all paths of consensus and time seems to have stopped. It is a luxury that we cannot afford. The problem is no longer what is happening, that too, but what awaits us around the corner. With the largest generation in history knocking on the doors of retirement, the challenge of chronic patients in Spain has just loomed – the current 20 million patients, to whose care three quarters of the health resources are allocated, represent already 80% of visits to the family doctor.
And while the peak of the population pyramid gains weight, the base falls from our hands. Stopping the brain drain is another of the great challenges: we need to retain our professionals, who are so magnificently educated. So much so that we run the risk of becoming a training center for the rest of Europe -although there are no official data, it is estimated that almost 30,000 Spanish doctors and nurses practice outside the country-. A strategy is urgently needed that grants flexibility and resources to a SNS that must focus on prevention and technology.
The public-private collaboration model, woven by consensus for more than 20 years and which has made Spain an international benchmark, requires attention and repair. Our memory is so light that some have already forgotten the enormous effort made by private healthcare during the pandemic, thanks to which we were able, together, to face the Covid crisis. On the brink of that abyss the big parties managed to find themselves. Also in recent months we have once again heard one another agree on the diagnosis of an exhausted SNS -as we verified in one of the last Debates of the Circle held in May in Madrid-, and in the call for a State Pact for the Health. There is no more delay.
It is time to work to reverse the degradation of the system and assume the challenge of shielding public health, free and universal, from ideological fluctuations. The moment demands vision and responsibility. Spain needs statesmen willing to take a step forward towards the best hour, that of consensus.
*angel bridge is president of the Circle of Healing
#hour #healing