Spain is the only country in Europe that does not yet recognize the specialty of infectious diseases. This is evidenced by a scientific article, recently published in the prestigious European magazine Clinical Microbiology and Infection, in which the situation of the training of doctors specializing in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases is analyzed, and summarized in a forceful and at the same time painful map for our country.
The scientific-technical reasons to recognize it are powerful and are the same that have led the rest of the European countries to create the specialty. The first is that infectious diseases generate an extraordinary health problem, also in our country. Just look at the serious consequences of influenza epidemics, HIV infection, hemorrhagic virus infections (Ebola, Crimea-Congo), imported infections multiplied by globalization (malaria, Chagas, dengue, Nile virus …) ; tuberculosis, opportunistic infections in transplant recipients or those related to healthcare. To which are added the emergence of new threats such as those caused by multi-resistant bacteria and the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The second is that the volume of knowledge that has fortunately been generated in recent decades to face such extraordinary challenges is enormous, so much so that it is comparable to that of classic specialties such as cardiology, neurology or nephrology.
There are also reasons of institutional coherence for the creation of the specialty. Coherence towards Europe, because what reasons justify this disagreement between our country and the EU, which prevents equal care for Spanish citizens with serious and complex infections and the free movement of professionals? Institutional of the Government and Parliament of Spain, because on two occasions, 2010 and 2017, the heads of the Ministry of Health, announced in parliament that at the end of that year the specialty of Infectious Diseases would be created; and on two occasions also, 2010 and 2017, the Spanish Parliament approved two non-law proposals, presented respectively by the PP and by the PSOE, urging the Government to create the specialty. And, finally, coherence of the autonomous communities themselves, which in the last three decades have created numerous infectious disease services in the hospitals of their health systems to respond to the indicated care demand, and have created different places for Infectious Diseases, and that, however, they still lack specialists for them trained by the MIR route.
The solution proposed by the Government to this anachronistic and unjustifiable situation is the Royal Decree of Specialties that is still in development more than two and a half years after it was announced, so it is not the adequate response to this problem that requires a urgent solution, because the health problems listed are real and affect many Spaniards every day.
Therefore, we urge the Government, in agreement with the autonomous communities, to act in the general interest and urgently recognize the Infectious Diseases Specialty in Spain.
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