On Saturday, demonstrations will be held in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Bilbao and Donostia-San Sebastián to demand a "public, dignified and quality" health system and denounce the management of Osakidetza. This is a call made by the Public Health Platform in collaboration with various social and trade union organizations.

The platform denounces that the current situation in Osakidetza is "the result of unfortunate planning and management by policy makers". She mentions several situations: shutting down ambulance and narrowing of care schedules, increasing difficulties in access to in-person care, expanding waiting lists for a specialist, extending the time limits for surgical intervention, continuous replacement of first level health personnel and violation of linguistic rights, among others.

The demonstration will start in Vitoria at 12:00 from Plaza Bilbao, in Bilbao at the same time from the Sacred Heart and in San Sebastian at 17:00 from Boulevard.

Today concentrations in hospitals

Today Thursday, Osakidetza staff have conducted concentrations in Txagorritxu, Cruces and Donostia hospitals. They denounce that they have "precarious" working conditions and that they need "deep solutions" to make public health a priority. SATSE, ELA, LAB, SME, CCOO and UGT report that the situation in Osakidetza is "serious", especially in primary care. The trade unions convened two days of strike on 18 and 19 May to denounce the "blockade" of the Sectoral Bureau and the "lack of solution" of the Department of Health.

Complaints over recent weeks

In recent weeks there have been many complaints about the management of Osakidetza. Among other things, during the weekend it was explained in Vitoria-Gasteiz that Osakidetza is planning a rotation system in the rural area of Alavesa for the transfer of staff from one outpatient clinic to another. They denounce that this would mean eliminating the relationship between patients and reference health workers and infringing the rights of rural workers.

A mosaic has been made in the Plaza de la Virgen Blanca and the members of the platform have stated that "Primary care, fundamental in disease prevention, does not have enough professionals, and in some neighborhoods and towns does not exist. We have professionals who perform tasks that do not correspond to them and that have too many patients, which means that patients cannot access face-to-face care, generating disappointment".

A week ago the College of Physicians in Gipuzkoa urged the Basque Government to adopt a series of measures to achieve a "quality system" that meets the needs of professionals and patients in both Gipuzkoa and the CAPV as a whole. She reported that many professionals suffer from "psychological distress" due to working conditions.

At the beginning of this month, the Aurrera platform of Children's Public Health in Álava denounced the "serious" situation of Osakidetza's pediatrics. At the hearing, held by about 100 Alavese families, it was explained that there are long waiting lists, that patients spend little time with doctors and that they have difficulty receiving care in Basque. They indicated that there are few professionals and that when they unsubscribe they are not replaced. Almost a quarter of pediatric places are deserted.