- A few days ago I read a letter from Mr Aitor Montes Lasarte, a doctor who has done a constant job in the Basque health sector in Euskaldunisation, and that is why I have taken the title he has given to make the reflections I am going to present here.
I am entitled to make these explanations, since at the end of the 1980s I was one of the founders of the Euskaldunization of Health Institution (EEO), in that first legalization and in the elaboration of those first statutes. I think that the association's governing bodies then amended those statutes.
This first generation of resident physicians who studied at the ikastolas gave the bellows to society. I began to hear in the direction of the Cruces Hospital that a group of Basque residents had begun doing clinical sessions in Basque. Also, at Ntra Hospital. Mrs. de Aránzazu, a group of doctors also wrote some short texts in Euskera, translated into one of the clinical histories of the Aranzazu Hospital in San Sebastián.
As Aitor rightly says, there has been no significant increase in the number of members of the association over all these years, nor have there been any initiatives that demand from the administration, the trade unions, the political parties, that have done nothing or nothing to guarantee health care in Basque to the Basque population.
The goal of the association, among others, I, was to support these actions and to demand that the administration and politicians normalize the use of Euskera in the health field. Some of us did not agree with the prudence or “militancy” of other founders, who preferred to give in and dedicate themselves exclusively to the deepening of the technical Basque, to the organization of courses for their learning, to the promotion of scientific days in Basque, etc. So the excuse was that there were not enough bilingual doctors. Thirty years later, significant members of the EEO invoke the same argument as an excuse not to start drafting reports aimed at the Basque population.
As Aitor rightly says, there has been no significant increase in the number of members of the association during all these years, nor has there been a vindictive initiative before the administration, the trade unions, the political parties, who have done nothing or nothing, to guarantee health care in Basque to the Basque population; and for the Basque people to regain the health status of all the standard languages in each country.
Seen from the outside, because today I am not a member of the EEO, seeing the few results that have been obtained in these thirty years, it seems that to get out of this situation a change is needed, since there are no proactive elements that an institution of this kind may need, and that is precisely what the future use of Euskera in the health field needs.