The Huesca town of Jaca does not have a mobile medical ICU every day. Only, Monday to Friday from 09:00 to 21:00. That is, this health service is no longer provided for 108 hours a week; Furthermore, on days when a greater influx of visitors is concentrated in the Aragonese Pyrenees. Also on holidays. A situation that has been occurring for a year and a half and for which thousands of people have already mobilized in a demand channeled by the citizen platform ‘UVI Móvil Jaca, we need it!’, whose voice has reached the Cortes of Aragon and to the streets with demonstrations like the one last Saturday in the capital of Jacetania.
From this platform it is remembered that “we are all susceptible to suffering a serious urgent event and urgency does not understand schedules.” The situation has been occurring since June 1, 2023, when the Government of Aragon modified the fold for the new urgent health service contract and this new map was drawn for the area. A mobile in-person and medicalized ICU is demanded 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, as was the case until then.
Mamen Sánchez, spokesperson for the platform, has been directly and tragically harmed by this measure. In her testimony, she explains that her husband was diagnosed with aortic vein dissection and “at the Jaca hospital they told us that he needed a mobile ICU for his transfer.” The measure was decreed at 9:20 p.m., twenty minutes after the service ended. “The doctor saw that the shortage of resources could mean the loss of the patient. The Sabiñánigo mobile ICU had to come,” but it was not available until two and a half hours later. “He arrived at the ICU of the Miguel Servet hospital in Zaragoza at two in the morning, very serious and with very little chance of survival,” and died shortly after.
When there is no mobile ICU in Jaca, plan B resides in the Emergency Medical Unit (UME) of the nearby town of Sabiñánigo, which must cover the regions of Jacetania, Alto Gállego and Sobrarbe, with an area of 5,400 square kilometers. Furthermore, in the event that the Sabiñánigo mobile ICU has to travel to Huesca or Zaragoza, it leaves these regions unattended for several more hours.
The platform asserts that since the mobile ICU was removed from Jaca, “there have been cases of people who have died after an accident or serious illness who needed a mobile ICU in the shortest time possible and did not have it, having to wait for the emergency to arrive. from Sabiñánigo with waiting times of up to one hour because this resource was busy at the time of the notice.”
He states that the lack of doctors alleged as the cause of the problem “is not real”: in the last opposition resolved in 2023 for emergency and emergency doctors of 061 of Aragon, 105 people appeared and were admitted to the exam: 58 passed and 27 places that were offered were filled. In addition, there are no ICU beds in the Jaca hospital.
The Government of Aragon replies that three professionals are needed to meet this demand and does not provide a precise deadline. The forecast released by the regional executive refers to February 2025 as the date for carrying out a training course after which doctors who request it may be assigned to the capital of Jacetania. In any case, they glimpse a solution in the will of professionals. The platform, on the contrary, insists that “it is not a problem of available doctors but of places.”
The services offered by a mobile ICU cannot be collected by a conventional ambulance. As ‘UVI Móvil Jaca, we need it!’ specifies, “in the face of a heart attack, a stroke or any other disease that depends on the time of action, we want to have the opportunity to save ourselves or not suffer irreversible consequences for the rest of our lives.”
Immediate attention
A mobile ICU, as Advanced Life Support ambulances are called, is prepared to immediately respond, with material and medication, to all emergencies and emergencies in which the patient is at immediate and potential life risk. An ambulance is limited to primary care and prioritizes the transfer of the patient to the hospital without the presence of a doctor being necessary.
Royal Decree 836/2012 establishes that the mobile ICU must have at least one driver who is in possession of the professional training title of health emergency technician and a nurse. In addition, with a doctor and a second health emergency technician if necessary. The equipment is much more specific than that of ambulances. For example, with heart monitors.
During the platform’s intervention on December 4 in the commission of citizen appearances and human rights of the Cortes of Aragon, the socialist deputy Sergio Ortiz recognized the mistake made by the previous government team to deprive users of a service that existed: “I don’t understand how we put out to tender such an important contract, allocating 13 million euros more per year and without satisfying the needs of the territory and the users who live there. For my part, I sincerely apologize and feel the need to make this self-critical reflection.”
The mayor of Jaca, Carlos Serrano (PP), emphasizes that this is an “inherited problem” that “is already being solved” and calls the platform “politicized”: “Paradoxically, it is made up of socialists, some of them part of electoral lists, and do not explain that the current Government of Aragon created in January 2024 the necessary budget items to provide Jaca with a 24-hour mobile ICU through the department of Health”.
Remember that the Popular Party presented at the time a “multitude” of motions and proposals by the Jaca City Council, the Provincial Council of Huesca and the Government of Aragon against the modification of the medical transport specifications and the defense of health in the municipality, “always with the vote against the socialists.”
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