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The State Confederation of Medical Unions (CESM) with representation throughout Spain has filed a lawsuit before the Contentious-administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court against the Ministry of Health. The representatives of the doctors blame the Ministry for failing to fulfill its obligation to provide health professionals with the necessary protective material to carry out their work safely and to reduce the risk of possible infection with the Covid-19 coronavirus.

The lawsuit states that the dictates of the World Health Organization regarding the protection of doctors and health professionals as a whole are being violated. Therefore, the confederation of medical unions requests the Supreme Court to immediately urge the Ministry of Health to deliver the necessary material so that professionals can work with guarantees. In short, they ask for some very precautionary measures to which the court must respond in the coming days.

Do you think that the Ministry of Health has this material? Gabriel Del Pozo, Secretary General of CESM, replies: "We believe that the Ministry of Health has to provide the doctors with this material. To do this, they must resort to all the mechanisms in their hands. If they do not have them, because then it will have to seize them where they are, because the gravity of the situation requires it. " And he adds: " If such equipment exists, as Health has pointed out, then distribute it, because there is a distribution problem that is preventing protection from reaching the doctors."

Del Pozo publicly denounces the environment of "total lack of coordination" in which the doctors are working. "What is said in one place is not known if it is valid for another or if they will apply it in the one beyond. We are witnessing a guerrilla war. There is no one who directs, who coordinates. There is no one who is taking responsibility and assuming command and that is the problem we have. "

They represent 13.6% of the total of infected, five points above the figures in Italy and more in total than in China , where there are more than double the number of infected. Professionals, who report retaliation, rebel against these data. At the Álvaro Cunqueiro Hospital in Vigo, Eva Maquieira, section chief of Aesthetic Surgery, was removed from office for denouncing the lack of protection and in Valencia, doctors have been prohibited from using their mobile phones to send information about the internal situation lives by the coronavirus.

On the 5,400 health workers who would be infected with the Covid-19 virus, according to the latest official figures , the CESM general secretary is incredulous: "It would be greater if we sampled all professionals." But aren't the tests being done already? "Not yet".

The step that CESM has taken by reaching its claim in the courts has had its reply at the autonomous level in the Community of Madrid. The Amyts union, a member of the state confederation of unions, has filed a lawsuit before the Social Courts against the Health Department of this community. They demand waterproof gowns, FPP2 and FPP3 masks, protective glasses and large waste containers for professionals from the entire health and care network of the Community of Madrid. "Other regional unions are considering following this same path," says Del Pozo.

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