The Calpe Government has expressed its disagreement with the reduction this summer of the service of the Medical Clinic on La Fossa beach, which will offer service from 25th June to 6th September, reducing the opening period from 121 days in 2023 to 74 days in 2024, which represents a reduction of 38.84% in the duration of the service.
These cuts do not only affect the days of service as the opening hours are also reduced. Last year the clinic operated from Monday to Friday from 10am to 6pm and on weekends and public holidays from 10am to 3pm, i.e. a total of 50 hours of service per week. However, this year the opening hours are from 8am to 3pm Monday to Friday, with no service on weekends and public holidays, which equates to 35 hours per week. This represents a 30% reduction in opening hours.
But the cuts also affect the staff, as this summer the clinic will only have one doctor, one nurse and one administrative assistant. This is an insufficient team for a clinic in the beach area of a municipality which during these months is going from a population of 25,000 to 100,000 inhabitants.
A few days ago, the Regional Health Minitry itself qualified the Dénia health department as difficult to cover, however, the local government considers that the statement does not carry enough weight to justify these cuts and accuses the Department of a lack of planning and foresight.
The councillor for Health, Itziar Doval, has described the situation as worrying and in the next few days will ask the Regional Ministry of Health to reconsider and reinforce this much-needed health service during the summer. Doval pointed out that "Since 2008 Marina Salud has been committed to the construction of the second Health Centre, an absolutely necessary infrastructure for a town with the characteristics of Calpe. We hope that now that the Regional Ministry of Health has taken over the management competences, this service will soon become a reality. Calpe must not accept the degradation of its public services that directly affect the lives of residents and visitors".
For her part, the mayoress, Ana Sala, pointed out that "the reduction of health services is unacceptable and puts our citizens and tourists at risk, we cannot allow our health to deteriorate in this way".