“We want more individual, closer, known and Euskaldun care and offer low-risk paediatric and delivery services at Galdakao-Usansolo Hospital.” These are the demands of the members of Pediatrics and Childbirth at Galdakao Hospital. They have already achieved the support of over sixty groups in Bizkaia, such as associations of fathers and mothers and feminist groups. In addition, individual accessions are being requested by collecting signatures.

Osakidetza announces that it will earmark EUR 28 million for the construction of a new building and parking lot at the Galdakao-Usansolo Hospital. The new building will host, inter alia, external consultations of 19 specialties, administrative offices, library and home hospitalization service. Pediatrics and Births at the Galdakao Hospital, according to the members of the initiative, will generate “benefits”, but denounce that they have not announced services of pediatrics or care for low-risk births: “It is one of the most notable shortages of health care in our region”.

In the absence of a paediatric service at Galdakao-Usansolo Hospital, children in the area are treated at Cruces Hospital when they are in an emergency or need to be admitted. So the journeys have to travel 40 kilometres more than in Galdakao. “Parents are obliged to make permanent displacements, because in this vulnerable situation the presence of parents is necessary,” they stress.

Moreover, despite the existence of the gynecology service, there is no delivery service, so all deliveries throughout Bizkaia are treated at the Hospital de Cruces and Hospital de Basurto, both high and low risk. “This presupposes conditioning the work of midwives and gynecologists, and since high-risk births have priority, it impairs the individual care of low-risk births,” they reported.

They stress that for pregnant women the Hospital of Cruces is “unknown” and “giant”: “It is not for them to go to Cruces”. For this reason, there are many women who decide to go to smaller hospitals, such as Mendaro or Mondragón: “About 25% of deliveries in these hospitals in Gipuzkoa are women from other Integrated Health Structures, most of them from our OSI”. They add that since they are not from the region they do not have the service fully assured: “It may happen that if there is no place in the region on the day of delivery, then they have to go to another hospital”.

They have claimed “more human”, “close”, “respectful” deliveries and childbirth spaces to empower: “We should work on the issue from a gender perspective.” As the Galdakao-Usansolo Hospital is the closest to the distance for the inner population, they want it to be treated in it: “The Galdakao-Usansolo Hospital is for us closer and better known than the Cruces Hospital, we feel closer”. They say that there are more Basque workers and that this also helps.