2023-11-27 16:07:15
Health experts have missed greater equity in the common portfolio of healthcare services to correct the differences between Autonomous Communities in the number of pathologies analyzed in neonatal screening.
Heel test on a baby in order to prevent and detect congenital diseases/EFE
This approach to neonatal screening has been highlighted at the conference “Early detection of congenital diseases: An opportunity for the future”, organized by the Foundation for Health Research (FUINSA), in collaboration with Novartis, in which different experts and specialists have participated.
The Conference has been developed throughout three round tables, titled respectively, “The contribution of neonatal screening in today’s healthcare”; “Public health and early detection and its procedures”; and “Health managers in the face of early detection.”
In the course of the day’s debates, the main researcher of the Molecular, Cellular and Genomics Biomedicine Group of the La Fe Research Institute and Unit U755 of CIBERER and member of the Board of Directors of the Spanish Association of Human Genetics, José María Millán has defined Spain as “the country with the greatest intranational differences in Europe”, and has argued that in other places such as Italy, close to 40 diseases are screened and there are differences by region of a maximum of 6, or in France and the Netherlands the established program is the same throughout the country.
Currently, the endocrine-metabolic diseases covered by the National Health System (SNS) are 7, waiting for another 4 that have been approved to be consolidated; although in some regions the programs reach up to 40 pathologies.
In this same debate table, “The contribution of neonatal screening in today’s healthcare”, the head of the Public Health Disease Prevention Service of the Balearic Islands, Antònia Galmés, stressed that “you have to know where we are”, in the sense that we live in a very decentralized country and that implies that the communities have certain powers of their own.
“Either we accept that or we rethink the State model,” he said in his speech, adding that “we have to value the quality of our programs, we have very good coverage.”
Along with them, the head of the Technical Unit of Population Screening Programs in the Ministry of Health of the Community of Madrid, María Vicenta Labrador, has highlighted that in the 55 years in which neonatal screening has been developed in Spain, They have performed 17.5 million tests on newborns, and each year there are “450-500 cases in which pathologies are detected to avoid further symptoms.”
Based on his experience, among the challenges that must be resolved are adapting the criteria and evaluating the results of the programs at the national level, as well as incorporating new diseases and investing in the validation of new techniques.
In the round table ‘Public health and early detection and its procedures’, Estefanía García, member of the Screening Programs Unit at the Ministry of Health, assured that they work with the different teams to “streamline the procedures” in the style of the vaccination schedule, for example.
Of course, for García, “it is not enough to include 40 diseases in the portfolio, if the quality of the screening and diagnosis test cannot be ensured,” for which he has insisted on establishing protocols agreed upon with the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System. .
For her part, the general director of Public Health of Castilla La-Mancha, Laura Ruiz, has supported this aspect so that the framework document is a “living” instrument to adapt to changes and that procedures are streamlined “if we have evidence of that a test is positive” for society.
The day was completed with a third table, “Health managers in the face of early detection”, in which a vision of the subject matter was offered from three perspectives: health managers in the face of early detection, with participation of the president of the Spanish Society of Health Directors (SINGLE), José Soto; the expectations of patients through the Spanish Federation of Rare Diseases (FEDER); and the double socio-health and political field, with the intervention of the coordinator of the Personalized and Precision Medicine Area of the Basque Health Service, Miren Nekane.
From left To the right, María Vicenta Labrador, head of the Technical Unit of Population Screening Programs of the Ministry of Health of Madrid; José María Millán, principal investigator of the Molecular, Cellular and Genomics Biomedicine Group of the La Fe Research Institute and member of the Board of Directors of the Spanish Association of Human Genetics; Antón Herreros, general director of FUINSA; and Antònia Galmés, head of the Disease Prevention Service and general director of Public Health of the Balearic Islands/Photo provided
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