More than 523,000 children and adolescents in Spain do not have an assigned doctor
, be it a primary care pediatrician or a family doctor.
The president of the Spanish Association of Primary Care Pediatrics (AEPap), Concepción Sánchez Pina, has made these figures public at the presentation of the 19th congress of the society, which brings together more than 700 professionals until this Saturday, March 4 , in Madrid.
The figures on the lack of paediatricians have been obtained from a survey carried out among the regional representatives of more than 4,900 paediatricians in health centers, who have provided data on vacant positions in their respective autonomous communities, which have been transferred to a population total of 7.07 million children under 15 years of age in Spain.
According to Aepap calculations, a total of 523,636 children do not have a referral doctor.
Sánchez Pina herself
has referred to the fact that there is a slight improvement compared to last year, when the estimate was 595,592 children without a doctor.
By autonomies,
Madrid is at the bottom, with more than 10% of the places without filling;
together with Catalonia, Asturias and Navarra, with more than 6%
.
In relation to the previous update of 2022, the situation in Asturias, Aragón has worsened (36% of places discovered in the Teruel sector and 7% in the Barbastro sector, are places with a licensed pediatrician on leave, service commission, maternity, etc. . without replacing), the Balearic Islands, Extremadura and Madrid.
On the other hand,
care in primary care for minors has improved in Castilla y León, Murcia and Andalucía
, by having more paediatrics places covered in health centers than the previous year.
Although in this survey the Aepap focuses on the worst possible case, that the child does not have a referral doctor regardless of the specialty,
the society defends that the scientific evidence supports that pediatricians are the ones who take care of minors
.
According to the same survey, there are communities where
up to 50% of pediatric positions are covered by non-specialists in pediatrics, such as the Balearic Islands and Castilla-La Mancha
.
In Murcia, 40% of the beds are in this situation, 36% in Andalusia and 26% in Madrid.
In the cases in which the places are not covered by paediatricians, "family doctors, general practitioners and non-EU doctors without an approved title are hired, in accordance with our federated societies", explained the president of Aepap.
"This situation, which we have been denouncing for years, has not improved enough or has worsened in some regions. Families know it, primary care pediatricians know it and the authorities cannot continue to look the other way, because children and teenagers have the right to quality care.
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