Arona Hospital Closure Looms Amid Untendered Expansion, Platform Outraged
South Tenerife's Public Hospital Platform voiced outrage over the impending 2025 closure of El Mojón hospital in Arona without its promised expansion, compounded by a critical shortage of social care facilities blocking hospital beds.
The Platform for a Public Hospital in South Tenerife is deeply saddened and frustrated. They are angry that the hospital in El Mojón, Arona, is set to close in 2025, even though its long-awaited expansion project hasn't even been put out for bids yet.
"People in the south feel forgotten when it comes to healthcare," the group said in a press release. They added, "We've been promised countless times that the South Tenerife Hospital was a priority. That's false; we've been waiting 30 years for the hospital we need. What more can we do? What are our leaders pushing us towards?"
The Platform also highlighted another issue: besides the delays in improving the El Mojón hospital, more and more rooms have been "blocked" in recent years. This happens because elderly patients, who are well enough to be discharged, cannot leave the hospital. There aren't enough social and healthcare facilities available to transfer them to.
This problem affects the entire island. Last October, Águeda Fumero, the Minister of Social Action, revealed that 18,046 dependent residents on Tenerife are waiting for the social and healthcare they need and are legally entitled to. At a council meeting, she apologized to patients and their families. She also defended her team's "hard work" at the Institute of Social and Socio-health Care (IASS), which led to the creation of 518 new places in two years. However, more than half of these new places are still not in use.
The Platform, which has long campaigned for a proper hospital in the south to meet the needs of Tenerife's most populated region, estimates that 60% of the rooms at the Arona hospital are currently being used this way. "With great pain, we must say that this facility is moving away from its original healthcare purpose and is instead becoming more of a social and healthcare center," they stated.
The Platform for a Public Hospital in South Tenerife ended by sending a message to Fernando Clavijo, President of the Canary Islands Government: "Remember that in each of our many meetings over the past two and a half years, we repeatedly stressed the need to expand the South Hospital. You even looked at your Health Minister and urged her to speed things up. But it's been pointless. Not even the tender for a basic architectural project has been issued during this entire period. That's why we feel cheated and deeply disappointed."
The association, made up of businesspeople, community leaders, and individuals, believes there's "no sufficient excuse to justify this intolerable delay." "Furthermore, trying to continue justifying it is like treating the citizens on this side of the island as fools," the statement sent to the media concluded.