Esther knew that his son Eric was allergic to milk when he began to give her porridge.
“That day we had to run to the emergency room.”
For years, she had kept the restlessness of her in the school backpack: a simple splash of another partner’s yogurt left her brands on her skin.
“Your case was not conventional, it was a very strong allergy,” explains this Menorquina Mother, which recalls the long journey of hospitals and bureaucratic procedures that he has had to give Eric a treatment that in other parts of Spain is given in public health.
, but by which she has had to pay a private hospital in Barcelona.
He did not find a solution in Balearic Public Health, where the deficit of allergists is a problemisthed problem and denounced by the whole sector: 12 Associations of allergology from all over Spain have now signed a letter that denounces the “grievance” and the violation of the Law of
Cohesion and quality of the National Health System that represents the fact that in the archipelago there are no public specialists.
“In Baleares, allergy is infratred and infradiagnosed and its residents can be considered second citizens,” reflects the letter to which this newspaper has had access and asking the Balearic government to solve the problem.
A recurrent claim for more than a decade.
After much battle and claim, and after having disbursed more than 3,000 euros for Eric’s first treatment, the family of him achieved that public healing assumed part of the cost.
They offered him to treat him in Palma, taking an airplane, but there was no integral service there.
“I have no complaints about the deal, but we were derived to immunology,” he explains, “and not at a comprehensive allergology service.”
The case of Esther is not unique in Balearic.
It is the autonomous community with fewer public resources of allergology in Spain, according to the Spanish Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (SEAIC).
There is only one allergologist (attached to the otolaryngology service) for more than one million inhabitants, when the WHO ratios recommend one for every 50,000 people.
Only in the Canary Islands, with just twice the population, there are 32 specialists.
The cities of Ceuta or Melilla have the same as the Balear archipelago.
The claim has jumped into the parliamentary debate.
The executive who presides over the socialist Francina Armengol defends that despite the deficit of allergists gives a “cross-cutting attention” through family physicians, pneumologists, otorrhines and other doctors.
This was defended by the Counselor Patricia Gómez to questions from the deputy of CS Juan Manuel Gómez before the parliamentarian.
These pressures have been translated that next week the Balearar Parliament will discuss in the Health Commission a proposal not the law of the parties represented in the House to try to solve this historical problem and include it as a strategic objective in its health plan 2021-
2026.
Experts calculate that a budget allocation of around 800,000 euros per year would be needed to cover the service.
At the moment it is not expected.
However, as indicated from the medical collective, attention does not occur by specialists and the service is therefore very deficit, causing the Balearics to go to private clinics.
“The Balearic Islands is a unique case in Spain; all the Autonomous Communities have a more or lesser extent an allergy service,” explains Antonio Valero, president of the Spanish Society of Allergy and Medical of the Clinical Hospital of Barcelona.
In the archipelago, he points out, there is no sufficient specialized assistance, or teaching, no research.
“The one who is born allergic there has a serious problem if he does not have sufficient resources,” says Valero, which emphasizes that it is especially delicate for vulnerable groups, such as oncological patients.
“In public health he was repaired by urgency, but nothing else,” says Fernando.
A private specialist did a study and got the vaccine.
On an island of great rural tradition such as Menorca, allergies to hymenoptera are not extraordinary.
But health does not guarantee a study to those exposed to their bites without knowing if they are allergic or non-allergic.
