Malaga hospital calls woman for gynaecological revision four years after first appointment
The woman is not an exception among the thousands of patients in the city who wait months or even years to receive an appointment with a doctor
Following the publication of a study that denounces average waiting times of 8.7 days for an appointment with Malaga province's primary healthcare, a woman has told SUR about another issue: the notorious waiting lists for outpatient consultations in some hospitals.
Carmen J. G. (not her real name) said that in mid-February this year she received a call from Hospital Materno Infantil regarding a gynaecological revision she was supposed to have almost three years ago.
The origin of this story dates back to the end of 2021, when Carmen had an aggressive bacterial infection, accompanied by "fever and pain in her lower abdomen". "My GP told me to go to Hospital Materno's emergency department, which I did. They gave me antibiotics, I went home but I had to go back because the fever wouldn't go down," she said.
Once she was on the new antibiotics, she overcame the infection. Six months later, in June 2022, she went for her first check-up at a gynaecology unit at the same hospital. Although she didn't have symptoms anymore, the doctor told her that they would call her to go for a revision one year later.
Around June 2023, Carmen went to the hospital to check whether her contact details were correct, to make sure she wouldn't miss the call. "They told me that they were correct and that they would call me back," she said.
They called her last month, almost three years after that visit and almost four years after her first appointment. "They asked me if I was well and if I needed that check-up," Carmen said. Although she was fine, she still wanted to get checked up, as the doctor had prescribed. Her appointment is at the beginning of April.
In June 2025, the waiting list for a first gynaecology consultation at Hospital Materno was 90 days, with a total of 3,906 patients waiting for their appointment. Of these, there were 2,468 people with an average delay of more than 60 days.
SUR has tried to contact Hospital Regional, part of which is the Materno, for a comment, but has not received a response.
