Madrid: Like many people, Madrid’s Alberto Perez underwent a home test to find out if his headache and cold-like symptoms were due to COVID-19.
Unable to contact his local health centre, where calls went unanswered and online appointments booked for the next week, he turned to the hospital’s emergency room for confirmation. After waiting three hours to see her, health workers there agreed to self-diagnose her, but did not provide any PCR test to ensure a more reliable result.
“The nurse seeing me said that, because I hadn’t lost my sense of taste or smell, I had the Omicron version,” said Perez, 39, who works as an online game developer in the Spanish capital. “But how could she know?” Overwhelmed by people seeking tests, needing medication or needing certificates to excuse their absence from work, primary health care services in Spain are working well beyond their limits during the current phase of the coronavirus. global pandemic,
Family doctors are usually the first stop in health care in Europe. They and primary care nurses are seen as critical in helping to prevent disease, keep pressure off hospitals, and provide continuity of care.
In a country that only a few weeks ago considered itself relatively safe as more than 80% of the target population has been fully vaccinated, the increasing workload in Spain has left doctors and nurses vulnerable to conditions other than COVID-19. Has prompted cancellation of routine check-ups and postponement of visits. For the weak in the house.
Because Perez’s positive test was taken at home, neither the hospital nor his local health center spared the resources needed to give him a PCR test. PCR samples can be sequenced to determine virus types, something that was not done with Perez or with thousands of other positive cases from home tests in Spain.
“You’re left with the feeling that there are no resources, that they have no people, and all they do is cover up reality by sending people home,” Perez said.
Caroline Berchet, a health economist at the Paris-based Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development, says primary health care in Europe has long been underappreciated and understood. The pandemic has exposed the resulting vulnerabilities in the system.
“Investment in primary health care is not enough across Europe” and beyond, Burchett said. In 38 OECD member countries, including the United States, in 2019, an average of only 13% of health spending was devoted to primary health care, compared with 28% to inpatient care.
“Primary health care requires better funding and investment in all (OECD) countries,” she said, adding that more staff, more training, better pay and working conditions, and to ensure more flexible delivery of care.
Paloma Repilla, spokeswoman for SATSE, the largest Spanish union representing nurses, said there are currently fewer hospitalizations. wave That means many people with mild symptoms are having a “brutal impact” on local health centres.
“The infection rate is so high that we are taking the pandemic out of the health care setting and we are asking people to be their own caregivers,” she said.
“The personal responsibility is great, but asking people to self-diagnose, deal with their own medical leave, and leave without any follow-up by professionals is extremely worrying.” In France, years of funding cuts in the public health system are to blame for the shortage of doctors in rural areas.
Officials say a similar problem exists in Italy, where general practitioners are feeling the burden of the latest surge as well as increased paperwork to certify people are safe to return to work and school.
Spanish federation spokeswoman Repilla said officials should be concerned about the consequences.
“If you test at home, what type of virus do you have? We don’t know,” she said. “Everything, including the period of self-isolation, is being decided based on sequencing what is not happening.”
Even the daily figures that headline and inform the response by experts and policymakers have once again fallen out of sync, just as they were at the start of the pandemic. That’s because at-home test results aren’t being reported to overwhelmed health centers, either because phones aren’t being answered, because there are no appointments, or because people simply aren’t bothering.
Health Minister Carolina Darius last week appealed to people to report their positive tests even if they show no symptoms or if they decide to stay at home with mild people.
Unions and other professional groups say medical workers cannot cope with the number of phone calls, video-assisted consultations and requests for testing, advice, treatment or the issuance of certificates to people who have to justify their absence from work. need to.
Contact tracing, once seen as the key to containing the pandemic, is something that has long been forgotten.
Primary care has fallen out of media and public attention for much of the pandemic, when much of the concern was focused on hospitals and intensive care units’ ability to cope with the influx of patients.
But labor groups and professional unions say the problems began much earlier, the result of years of low spending that has led to many temporary contracts for medical workers and poor healthcare facilities.
Following the 2008 European debt crisis, a conservative government in Spain implemented strict austerity measures, which meant significant budget cuts for the public health system. Similar reductions occurred elsewhere in Europe.
Spain’s centre-left socialist government last month unveiled a plan to improve the quality and accessibility of primary health care over the next two years. Critics said the move was overdue.
Ten days after completing his quarantine at his home in Madrid, Perez, an online game developer, continued to test positive with the home kit but was still struggling to get an appointment with his general practitioner. His health center, where he eventually reached by phone, told him to stay home for the New Year’s break, and offered a phone call the following week.
“There are no doctors or nurses and then we are left to deal with it,” Perez said. “How is it not connected?”
Unable to contact his local health centre, where calls went unanswered and online appointments booked for the next week, he turned to the hospital’s emergency room for confirmation. After waiting three hours to see her, health workers there agreed to self-diagnose her, but did not provide any PCR test to ensure a more reliable result.
“The nurse seeing me said that, because I hadn’t lost my sense of taste or smell, I had the Omicron version,” said Perez, 39, who works as an online game developer in the Spanish capital. “But how could she know?” Overwhelmed by people seeking tests, needing medication or needing certificates to excuse their absence from work, primary health care services in Spain are working well beyond their limits during the current phase of the coronavirus. global pandemic,
Family doctors are usually the first stop in health care in Europe. They and primary care nurses are seen as critical in helping to prevent disease, keep pressure off hospitals, and provide continuity of care.
In a country that only a few weeks ago considered itself relatively safe as more than 80% of the target population has been fully vaccinated, the increasing workload in Spain has left doctors and nurses vulnerable to conditions other than COVID-19. Has prompted cancellation of routine check-ups and postponement of visits. For the weak in the house.
Because Perez’s positive test was taken at home, neither the hospital nor his local health center spared the resources needed to give him a PCR test. PCR samples can be sequenced to determine virus types, something that was not done with Perez or with thousands of other positive cases from home tests in Spain.
“You’re left with the feeling that there are no resources, that they have no people, and all they do is cover up reality by sending people home,” Perez said.
Caroline Berchet, a health economist at the Paris-based Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development, says primary health care in Europe has long been underappreciated and understood. The pandemic has exposed the resulting vulnerabilities in the system.
“Investment in primary health care is not enough across Europe” and beyond, Burchett said. In 38 OECD member countries, including the United States, in 2019, an average of only 13% of health spending was devoted to primary health care, compared with 28% to inpatient care.
“Primary health care requires better funding and investment in all (OECD) countries,” she said, adding that more staff, more training, better pay and working conditions, and to ensure more flexible delivery of care.
Paloma Repilla, spokeswoman for SATSE, the largest Spanish union representing nurses, said there are currently fewer hospitalizations. wave That means many people with mild symptoms are having a “brutal impact” on local health centres.
“The infection rate is so high that we are taking the pandemic out of the health care setting and we are asking people to be their own caregivers,” she said.
“The personal responsibility is great, but asking people to self-diagnose, deal with their own medical leave, and leave without any follow-up by professionals is extremely worrying.” In France, years of funding cuts in the public health system are to blame for the shortage of doctors in rural areas.
Officials say a similar problem exists in Italy, where general practitioners are feeling the burden of the latest surge as well as increased paperwork to certify people are safe to return to work and school.
Spanish federation spokeswoman Repilla said officials should be concerned about the consequences.
“If you test at home, what type of virus do you have? We don’t know,” she said. “Everything, including the period of self-isolation, is being decided based on sequencing what is not happening.”
Even the daily figures that headline and inform the response by experts and policymakers have once again fallen out of sync, just as they were at the start of the pandemic. That’s because at-home test results aren’t being reported to overwhelmed health centers, either because phones aren’t being answered, because there are no appointments, or because people simply aren’t bothering.
Health Minister Carolina Darius last week appealed to people to report their positive tests even if they show no symptoms or if they decide to stay at home with mild people.
Unions and other professional groups say medical workers cannot cope with the number of phone calls, video-assisted consultations and requests for testing, advice, treatment or the issuance of certificates to people who have to justify their absence from work. need to.
Contact tracing, once seen as the key to containing the pandemic, is something that has long been forgotten.
Primary care has fallen out of media and public attention for much of the pandemic, when much of the concern was focused on hospitals and intensive care units’ ability to cope with the influx of patients.
But labor groups and professional unions say the problems began much earlier, the result of years of low spending that has led to many temporary contracts for medical workers and poor healthcare facilities.
Following the 2008 European debt crisis, a conservative government in Spain implemented strict austerity measures, which meant significant budget cuts for the public health system. Similar reductions occurred elsewhere in Europe.
Spain’s centre-left socialist government last month unveiled a plan to improve the quality and accessibility of primary health care over the next two years. Critics said the move was overdue.
Ten days after completing his quarantine at his home in Madrid, Perez, an online game developer, continued to test positive with the home kit but was still struggling to get an appointment with his general practitioner. His health center, where he eventually reached by phone, told him to stay home for the New Year’s break, and offered a phone call the following week.
“There are no doctors or nurses and then we are left to deal with it,” Perez said. “How is it not connected?”
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