Miguel Bakit, 74, diagnosed with cancer, had an hour to undergo surgery on Tuesday of last week at the Guillermo Grant Benavente Hospital, however – although they prepared him early – he could not enter the ward because the place was taken due to the strike carried out by Fenats workers and which ended this Saturday after extensive conversations with the Ministry of Health (Minsal).
Don Miguel’s is just one of the more than 300 surgeries that were suspended at the beginning of this year, during the 25 days that the last strike lasted and in which four union leaders remained on hunger strike, in two hospitals in Concepción . To these are added another 740 surgical interventions that were rescheduled last year, due to other mobilizations that have been carried out in the healthcare facilities.
According to the Concepción Health Service, in January alone, as a result of the Fenats strike, 261 operations were suspended at the Regional Hospital and 59 at the Trauma Hospital.
Now, after the end of the mobilization, the surgery of Don Miguel and that of Don Jorge Troncoso – who has a kidney tumor and also needs surgery – can be resumed “as soon as possible”, at the request of the Health Service. However, the waiting list remains under pressure, despite having spent more than 2 billion pesos as a result of the 10 strikes that were registered in 2022 and after having resorted to buying care in the private sector for the most urgent cases.
The case of Orieta Aravena was exceptional, the patient from the Palomares de Concepción sector had to undergo gallbladder surgery for a polyp. In the time it took for her to receive an appointment to be operated on, her problem had worsened, but the management team managed to have her operated on at the Lota Hospital, although she is now on the waiting list, again, for a hernia.
From the Consultative Council of the Regional Hospital, its president, Félix Adlerstein, told The counter that there are cancer patients who have not been able to undergo surgery, that the waiting list is already complicated and that they had been given a date for surgery, but with this problem they have been postponed. “And everyone knows, even more so people who work in health, that an operation on a cancer patient, in this case –known firsthand by Adlerstein–, a case of liver cancer with metastasis, if it is not he operates, or he dies or, if he had two years to live, he will have six months, if they run the operation for one or two months”, he commented, along with declaring that “this happened to another level”.
“In total, in 2022 we had about 740 surgeries that could not be performed, of which about 318 were not due to the mobilizations. The rest of them, yes,” explained the director of Health Care Management of the Concepción Health Service, Dr. Javier Gamboa, in a balance of surgeries in the area. That is to say, only last year, a total of 422 surgeries could not be carried out due to lack of personnel due to stoppages.
End of unemployment, but with an even longer waiting list
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“We appreciate the trust of our colleagues, the work and permanent struggle of the Eighth Region Federation, Fenats Grant Benavente and Fenats Traumatológico. We salute the agreement reached today in the Eighth Region between our organization and the Minsal”, they pointed out from the National Fenats , along with announcing the end of the last strike.
Thus, the stoppage of activities that had been taking place since January 3 at the Guillermo Grant Benavente and Traumatológico de Concepción hospitals was ended, motivated by the demand for a mobilization service for workers and which had been granted at the beginning of the pandemic. –a cost that, in two years, totaled 3,200 million pesos–, when there were still no vaccines and the country was under a health alert. The agreement with the Minsal was to “explore ways”, such as private financing, to take charge of the demand, since there is no legal norm that allows health services to finance this mobilization.
“Now, our main occupation is to recover the surgeries postponed by this stoppage and that significantly affected our patients who are the most vulnerable to any mobilization. For this reason, I have instructed the directors of the Guillermo Grant Benavente and Traumatological hospitals to define a plan to recover the suspended surgeries and get it up and running as soon as possible,” said Víctor Valenzuela, director of the Concepción Health Service.
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For his part, Dr. Gamboa specified that the same criteria they had for prioritizing surgical interventions should be used, so that the timing of surgery has an impact on the health condition of people.
Considering the number of hospitalized patients who must undergo surgery to be discharged and thus be able to admit new patients, the strategy of extending hours and operating on Saturdays, to schedule surgeries, will continue with the optimal installed capacity of the wards.
It is worth mentioning that, prior to the lifting of the strike, the Health Commission of the Chamber of Deputies and Deputies summoned the Minister of Health, Ximena Aguilera, to report on the situation in the Regional and Trauma hospitals.
On that occasion, deputy Eric Aedo, representative of the 20th district and member of the House Health Commission, said that “I have spoken with doctors from the Regional Hospital, specifically with the gynecologist-oncologist Lionel Correa, and he has expressed the pain feel because so many women with cancer have not been able to have their surgery. Aedo maintained that “the lives of people, women, men or children cannot be held hostage,” for which he called for agreements to be sought.
According to the information provided by Dr. Correa, prior to the lifting of the strike, they could not carry out operations at the Regional Hospital for two months, due to the mobilizations registered during 2022.
The Concepción Health Service has invested more than 2 billion pesos as a result of the 10 strikes that were registered last year and due to which it had to buy care in the private sector.
The presidential delegate of Biobío, Daniela Dresdner, confirmed administrative actions on the part of the Concepción Health Service against the officials who called for the mobilization, meanwhile, from the Guillermo Grant Benavente Hospital they affirmed that they will do everything possible to advance with the waiting list and that Don Miguel will be admitted to the pavilion this Tuesday.
