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The lack of resources and the increase in population in the summer has led to an increase in activity and saturation of the health service on the Costa del Sol. As a result, three new ambulances with intensive care equipment have been allocated for this health district, although in reality not all of them will be able to function as ICUs due to the lack of medical professionals.
As this newspaper has been able to confirm, these three ambulances have been assigned to the health centres of Estepona, Arroyo de la Miel and San Pedro Alcántara. In the case of Estepona, Malaga medical union SMM claimed on Wednesday that it was going to be brought in without a medical team. This, in practice, means that it will no longer be a mobile ICU (which was the purpose of the contract) and will become an EMCA (which stands for mobile advanced care team), and will therefore be able to provide fewer services; this was described as "surprising" by the aforementioned union.
The mobile ICU in Arroyo de la Miel is not free of controversy either. The health department insists that it will be fully equipped, although it has not yet begun to operate. The Andalusian health service (SAS) has asked for an "extension" for its commissioning, arguing that the reason is not a lack of staff, but that the study of where it was to be located took longer than expected. The plan, they say, is for it to start operating on 1 August, at the height of summer.
There is some disagreement over the third new mobile ICU, the one in San Pedro Alcántara. The department insists that it is already up and running with all its equipment, but the SMM rejects this claim. It points out that there is indeed a new mobile ICU at the health centre, but that this expansion of the service has not been accompanied by a doubling of staff. This information, they add, is what the department itself gave them on 10 July at the meeting held to report on the summer plan in the Costa del Sol health district.
Low recruitment
Beyond the issue of ambulances, the SMM argues that the "lack of recruitment of doctors" and the "replacement of doctors by nurses" in the mobile ICUs when there are no professionals available will affect user care and increase the work overload of the staff.
"As was to be expected, the Costa del Sol primary care district has once again informed the unions of this year's summer plan in the western area rather late and badly," it complained. In addition, it said that, "without providing any written document", they explained that a total of 9,567 working days in all areas, "the same as in 2023", are going to be contracted during the summer months. In fact, the SMM stresses that, compared to last summer, this year, the situation continues to be "just as worrying", as they have not adopted the necessary measures to deal with the high demand for services which will create a "work overload" for the doctors.
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