• Health. Fear in the residences before the second wave of Covid-19: "Our elders cannot wait any longer"

  • Live. Follow live news about the pandemic

Nursing homes for the elderly were one of the main sources of contagion and death in the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

In this second, it is feared that what happened will be repeated.

The associations and employers look to the administrations, asking for means, resources and that they be listened to, placing the ministers of Health, Salvador Illa, and Social Rights, Pablo Iglesias, as ultimately responsible. The Government alleges that social services are transferred to the autonomies, but

from the vice-presidency of

Churches

work is already underway to change the residential model.

Their bet, the «immediate challenge», is to create small living units in these centers to personalize and segment the care and thus try to better combat outbreaks.

In other words: grouping patients with pathologies, dependency situations, in need of support and similar care in separate floors, so that each sector could become an autonomous or isolatable module if necessary.

This new model, with sectors with 30-40 residents, would aim to "guarantee a better connection with primary care, with the health part, in order to be able to incorporate elements of good practice such as drainage", sources from the vice-presidency, who add: "There will be a line of financing specifically designed for the rehabilitation of the centers, which will have to be adapted in the coming years."

managing them

and its situation in a pandemic like the one that plagues

Spain

They have been a great Achilles heel in Spain.

The lack of foresight, dialogue, speed ... have made the elderly living in these centers the most affected group.

Pablo Iglesias

He is responsible for the government's social policies, but he claims that the powers are autonomous.

Associations and employers ask the Executive, above the powers of town halls or ministries to act, take command as is done with Health, because, they believe, it is not going from words to deeds. «They hear us but they don't they listen to us.

Everything that has happened, and is happening, is because preventive measures are not taken.

Concrete measures are necessary.

We go to the few meetings to which they call us, full of education, we leave believing that they have understood us but no action is taken.

The lament is from the doctor

Juan Manuel

Martinez Gomez

, president of the

Spanish Confederation of Organizations of the Elderly (CEOMA)

, which represents 23 organizations for the elderly from different communities, with nearly 800,000 grassroots members.

As revealed at the beginning of July by the State Association of Directors and Managers in Social Services, a document that Health presented to the communities, with a summary of data up to June 20, already specified the figure of 27,350 deaths in residences: in 9,003 cases (32.9% of the deceased) were certain of death from Covid, in 9,830 Covid symptoms were detected but it was not confirmed (35.9%) and the rest (31.2%) were attributed to other causes The social vice presidency has already transferred to the autonomies this summer, within the framework of the Territorial Council, the need to change the model.

Your bet is based on three pillars.

The first is not to medicalize the residences;

reject that they are "hospitals

low cost

or in semi-hospitals, “sources from the Iglesias department use.

An approach that, yes, clashes with what is demanded this week by

We can

Madrid, who asked Ayuso to medicalize them.

Second: it is advocated that the centers that are built are smaller.

And third: that the current ones be rehabilitated to create smaller coexistence units. This last point is one of the priority axes for the Social Vice Presidency.

Specifically, and delving into the approach, it goes through "organizing the buildings so that the care teams can attend to each unit in a more personalized way."

That is, that the residences create several units per floor that allow the residents to be distributed according to their needs, but that generate smaller and more flexible spaces "to facilitate more personalized and sectorialized attention that avoids or minimizes possible infections or viral transmission," they point out. The concept coined in the Government and that, even, appears in the Budget project

PSOE

-

United we can

it is «mini-residences».

Vice-presidency wishes that this «a new architecture» of the residences is obligatory for the centers of new construction.

In other words, make funding available to the autonomous communities to build "new public residential centers of adequate size and design to implement this model, as well as day centers or similar facilities." Currently, according to 2019 data, Spain has 5,417 residential centers and a total of 372,985 places, with an average age of 82 years, with multiple pathologies and a high degree of dependency, draws the sector.

Annex centers for contagions

The approach that the vice-presidency of Social Rights moves to the CCAA is to have annexes-close to residences centers to take infected and facilitate isolation without large displacements.

To continue reading for free

Sign inSign up

Or

subscribe to Premium

and you will have access to all the web content of El Mundo

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more