Cemsatse calls a health strike in Ceuta for September 24 due to the collapse of care

The Cemsatse union coalition, which brings together the medical union CESM and the nursing union SATSE, has called for a strike on September 24 in "the entire healthcare area of ​​Ceuta" with the aim of launching an "SOS" in the face of a situation that they describe as "collapse" and "chaos" derived from the arrival of tens of thousands of people from Morocco to the autonomous city at the end of July.

The union with the highest representation in the Sectoral Board of the National Institute of Health Management (Ingesa), an organization dependent on the Ministry of Health that manages health responsibilities in the autonomous city, has released a statement late this Monday to call on all health and non-health personnel in Ceuta to participate in the announced mobilizations, which begin this week with a rally at 11:00 a.m. this Thursday at the doors of the Ceuta University Hospital (HUCE) and another demonstration at the next day at the same time in front of the Otero Health Center, which houses the headquarters of the Ingesa Territorial Directorate.

These two actions, which will be carried out under the motto 'For public health, the dignity of professionals and patients', will be followed by a 24-hour health strike that the union organization has called for next Thursday, September 24. A call for which CESM, its president, otorhinolaryngologist Enrique Roviralta, fears that "very high minimum services" will be established.

The union president, who also presides over the Ceuta College of Physicians, explains to 20minutos that it is not a strike to demand higher salaries, but rather it is a form of protest, a call "SOS" to denounce the "situation of deterioration in the quality of care and the overload of staff." "We no longer know what to do. For us, the main problem is the denial of the problem. There are already colleagues on sick leave and some are going to have consequences for their entire lives," he lamented.

"The persistent impassivity of the Ministry of Health leaves us no alternative but the most extreme measure of conflict," reads the statement in reference to the strike call. The unions have expressed their "most absolute rejection of the statements of the Ministry of Health, which attempt to deny the emergency situation that the public health system is going through in the autonomous city."

Dr. Roviralta adds to this newspaper that "in the face of this health chaos, which has a negative impact on the population of Ceuta, and with the horizon at the end of the year as the President of the Government has said, there is no choice" but to call for a strike to "demand minimally decent healthcare."

From the Satse nurses union, its general secretary in Ceuta, Elisabeth Muñoz, also tells this newspaper that "Ingesa has not left us any option other than calling a strike because it denies the data, camouflages it, plays with the statistics to say that we have a normality that we do not have, and all health and non-health personnel, both in the hospital and in the health centers, are suffering from it."

"Healthcare in Ceuta is not only at the limit, but has exceeded its operational capacity due to the structural problems that the Ministry does not resolve and to which has been added the collapse caused by the people arriving in July," concludes the Cemsatse statement.

Ingesa data

Doctors have been warning of the situation "on the limit" that they are experiencing for weeks, and have demanded "real" differentiated circuits to derive the increase in demand for care by the migrant population. From Ingesa, however, they assure in a recent balance that "more than 100" hirings have been carried out. They add that the average occupancy of HUCE beds was 50% as a whole (Ceuta population and migrant population) during the month of August, according to data from the HUCE Department of Statistics and Management Control.