Miguelillo jumps on his grandmother’s bed. He is happy and plays with a computer that acts as a tablet. At first glance, anyone would think that he is a child over seven years old, but Miguelillo suffers from a rare disease called ondine, which causes his nervous system to not work properly and makes him forget to breathe. Additionally, he has autism, which causes him to communicate through electronic devices. He needs constant medical attention, provided by his family, and routinely visit a hospital that is an hour and a half from his home. His case exemplifies a need that can no longer wait in La Alpujarra (Granada): finally having a hospital.
“It is unfair that, paying the same taxes as everyone else, we have to consider whether it is worth it for us to go to the doctor or not because of the length of time it may take or the fear that they will not be able to treat us correctly,” says Toñi Jiménez. She is Miguelillo’s grandmother and one of the most active women in the entire Alpujarra region to demand the opening of the hospital that the Andalusian Government has been planning for decades in Órgiva. To date, there have been several plans for its construction for thirty years, but none have advanced beyond words and papers passed from drawer to drawer.
As of today, sources from the Ministry of Health argue that the project is being put out to tender but that “little or no progress” has been made on the Alpujarreño hospital. A “little or nothing” that stabs like a dagger into the lives of the 25,000 inhabitants of La Alpujarra. Because cases like Miguelillo’s, although extreme, show that there are places that are forgotten by the administration. This medium has made the journey that Miguelillo would have to take to go from his home in Trevélez to the San Cecilio Clinical Hospital in Granada. The round trip takes three hours without traffic and can easily exceed that if the conditions are adverse both in terms of asphalt and weather.
The route is full of curves, narrow lanes – this editor’s vehicle had to stop on several occasions to let others pass, including an ambulance -, steep slopes and all kinds of obstacles typical of a purely mountain road. This is in the case of the journey between Granada and Trevélez, which is aggravated when the routes are between the towns of La Alpujarra themselves or between any of them and the closest hospital, which is Motril, which is also an hour away. The distance between the need and the solution is, as can be seen, too far and it does not seem that the situation is going to change.
A paradigmatic case
Miguelillo, at seven years old, is probably not aware that his story serves as a claim for the Órgiva hospital to one day become a reality. His medical needs lead him to have a nurse with him at the school he attends and his own family has become experts in his care. Miguelillo cannot breathe automatically while he sleeps, so he needs to be on a respirator at night and have a pulse oximeter to monitor his oxygen saturation. Their parents also always have an ambu (resuscitation bag), oxygen and emergency medication on hand.
“I don’t leave the house without the respirator, the pulse oximeter and everything I need. Even when I go to have coffee with him, I have to be alert in case something goes wrong,” says Raquel Álvez, Miguelillo’s mother. She, who ran a restaurant, has now become an expert in measuring time and controlling medicine in emergency situations. He does the first because he must consider whether it is worth bringing his son to a hospital that is too far away and the second to solve the first of the deficits.
When Miguelillo was barely a year and a half old, he suffered a very difficult episode: a severe seizure due to an excessive level of carbon dioxide in his blood. It took almost three hours for the ambulance to take him to the hospital. “It was chaos. The first time he had a seizure we were alone and although we gave him medication, we didn’t know what to do. “It took them almost an hour to get there from the nearest doctor’s office, which is in Pitres.” Afterwards, they had to take him by ambulance to Órgiva and once there, transfer him to another one in the direction of Granada.
Few resources
This ambulance game is not a whim, but a necessity. As the region is isolated and resources are limited, La Alpujarra always has to have an ambulance in service, so it must be replaced by another once it arrives in Órgiva. “We have to pray that two people do not suffer a heart attack at the same time because if that happens, one will surely die,” laments Toñi Jiménez. As resources are limited, there are doctor’s offices from Monday to Friday in many towns in the region, but with very short hours, a couple of hours.
There is also no specialized pediatric service in these clinics, except in Órgiva, a place where children who suffer an emergency cannot go because the closest emergency room is in Pitres, but they do not have child care. “If you have a fever or it starts to get worse, we try to stay at home. I think: ‘What if something happens to him along the way?’ It is a constant anxiety,” says Raquel, Miguelillo’s mother.
As he has another son, four-year-old Martín, he recently had to consider whether it was worth taking him to a doctor after he fell on his bicycle. Despite the situation of her eldest son, she and her partner live in Trevélez because they were told they could do so: “But being five minutes from a hospital is not the same as being three hours away.” On the other hand, local health centers do not have equipment for basic tests such as x-rays or rapid analyses, which forces people to travel to hospitals in Granada or Motril. “If there was a hospital in Órgiva, we could go there for simple things like an x-ray, but now everything involves an eternal journey,” explains Raquel.
Another unfulfilled horizon
And so, the future hospital of La Alpujarra, announced as an “Expanded High Resolution Center” with minor outpatient surgery, something that is not what the neighbors are pursuing since they believe that what is needed is a hospital and not a “center”. of great health”, is still a project in the air despite the promises made. In July, the mayor of Órgiva, Raúl Orellana, assured that it was planned to be put out to tender before the end of the year with an initial budget of 800,000 euros for its execution. Sources from the Ministry of Health confirm that it is being “tendered”, after the transfer of the land by the Consistory, but do not give more details about it.
The lack of information and progress is not new in this infrastructure, which has been delayed for more than three decades. According to Orellana, the previous project was a technical failure: one million euros was invested in planning that turned out to be useless because it was not adapted to the selected site. Now, the mayor claims to have resolved this problem after acquiring suitable land and recovering the necessary funds with the support of the Government of Andalusia and the European Union, an effort that he estimates at more than 10 million euros. “The important thing is that the hospital is going to be a reality, this is already unstoppable,” he said at the time.
Despite Orellana’s optimistic words, the delay generates concern among the residents of La Alpujarra, who see how another year closes without concrete progress. The July meeting in Seville, in which the Deputy Minister of Health, María Luisa del Moral, and the general director of the SAS, José Antonio Miranda, participated, marked a roadmap that has not yet materialized. Meanwhile, the region continues to depend on limited medical services and hospitals located hours away, a reality that clashes with the promises of proximity and efficiency of the announced project.
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