Portal de Lorca
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The councilor of Izquierda Unida-Verdes, Gloria Martín, has denounced that the lack of beds in the Rafael Méndez university hospital is causing several patients to wait up to four days waiting in the Emergency Observation area to be admitted.
Therefore, Martín has asked the new manager of the Murcia Health Service, Asensio López, "urgent actions to decongest the hospital and alleviate the unsustainable situation for patients and workers."
The councilor of the United Left has explained that part of the problem is due to the fact that the increase in the number of operating rooms has not been accompanied by the increase in hospital beds needed to cover the demand generated by the new surgical activity.
"It is being planned badly, with continuous patches, when the reality is that Rafael Méndez has practically exhausted his capacity for growth," he said.
In this regard, he recalled that this center covers an area of ​​influence of some 172,630 inhabitants of the municipalities of Lorca, Águilas, Aledo, Puerto Lumbreras and Totana, while it only has 283 beds, that is, 1.6 per thousand inhabitants.
This is the same ratio that exists, for example, in Rwanda, and is very far from the average of the Region of Murcia which is 3.2 beds per thousand inhabitants (Eurostat, 2019).
The average of Area III of Health is even below Andalusia, which is the autonomous community with fewer beds for every thousand inhabitants (2,1).
Rafael Méndez is also the hospital in the Region that has the lowest number of beds for critically ill patients (ICU) with 5.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, when the regional average is 7.2.
For all these reasons, Martín has expressed the need to build a new hospital in Lorca and convert Rafael Méndez into a center specialized in gerontology and complex chronic patients.
This would cover both the healthcare needs of public health users in general, as well as the specific ones related to the gradual aging of the population, as well as the expectations and development of their professionals.
A new center for which IU-Verdes has proposed the Carraclaca area as a location, where the shooting range of the 13th Infantry Regiment was located until the mid-1990s.
Gloria Martín has also denounced the "comparative tort" suffered by Lorca and the region in terms of health infrastructure.
And, while in Area III no new hospital has been planned since the inauguration of Rafael Méndez in 1990, in the last thirty years, the city of Murcia has joined the Virgen de la Arrixaca (863 beds), hospitals Morales Messeguer (394 beds) and Reina Sofía (330 beds), the latter in operation since 2005. For its part, Cartagena has also doubled its centers with the construction in 2011 of the Santa Lucía University General Hospital (667 beds), which complements the activity that Santa María del Rosell was providing, where last year 60 new beds were opened.
"We do not want more than anyone, but not less," said Martin, who has insisted that users and public health workers in Area III deserve "dignified" facilities that are consistent with their care needs.
Source: IU-verdes Lorca
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