The current economic crisis is causing difficulties in health care for children and young people, which are aggravated by the cuts, not based on professional or scientific criteria, which the Madrid Government is applying in health benefits. All this can lead to a significant worsening of the health status of Madrid children.
The Pediatric Primary Care Observatory was created a year ago and is made up of scientific and health societies that work with children and adolescents. Its purpose is monitor and alert the health and labor problems of pediatricians in health centers in Madrid, in order to optimize the quality of assistance to children and adolescents in our Community. The Pediatric Society of Madrid and Castilla la Mancha has recently explored how the economic crisis is affecting pediatric care through a questionnaire made to its members, which AMPap members have also answered.
Pediatricians observe with alarm the deterioration that is occurring in the quality of care. The main reasons that lead to this conclusion are the following:
Due to the economic difficulties of the families.
Increase in psychosocial pathology as a result of economic and labor difficulties in families.
Difficulty acquiring medication, mainly for chronic diseases.
Difficulty in acquiring food suitable for children's age, essential in this period of growth
Lack of attendance at reviews and scheduled appointments due to the precarious employment situation of the parents.
Low in private medical insurance and transfer of patients to public health, with the consequent overload in the consultations and deterioration in the medical attention as a result of the greater assistance pressure.
Inequality and inequality in access to quality pediatric care and adequate treatments
Because of indiscriminate cuts in health care.
Withdrawal of financing of medical devices necessary for the prevention or the correct control and treatment of certain diseases.
Health Overload motivated by excessive quotas, lack of substitutes and increase of children coming from private health.
Demotivation of professionals due to the continuing lack of consideration for their work, aggression against their working conditions and significant and progressive loss of their salaries to a greater extent than other public workers.
To all this they add the already chronic problems of pediatrics, such as a significant number of children to attend or the lack of specific training resources for pediatricians.
Although the current economic difficulties have not been caused by health professionals, much less by the child population, they are falling upon them, unfairly and exaggeratedly, extremely harsh measures that will only achieve the progressive deterioration of the quality of pediatric care and, therefore, of the health of Madrid's children.
