It has been a minimum agreement, but an agreement, after all. The Basque Parliament has unanimously approved an initiative that urges the Basque Government to “adapt and reinforce” the specific resources of the care programs for Eating Disorders (EDs).
The initiative started from the PP Cs coalition, but finally what has been approved is a minimum agreement around an alternative text that has had the support of all the groups in the chamber. In the approved text, the Chamber of Vitoria calls on the Department of Health to include “those services, benefits and resources that are considered necessary” and to create and strengthen the specific resources of the care programs that already exist.
To do this, the Department of Health has promised to create “a monographic group” to analyze eating disorders. Councilor Gotzone Sagardui, when she adopted this protocol two weeks ago, denied that this decision was made due to the existence of “multiple deficiencies”, and assured that her role will be to review the scientific evidence with the aim of proposing recommendations both in methodology of assistance and updating of possible resources. The parliamentarians with the amendment approved today also urge the Department of Health that this group has the participation of “the agents involved and the users”.
One of the main problems reported to ABC by patients suffering from some type of eating disorder in the Basque Country, the problem is greater for the most serious cases due to the lack of specific hospitalization resources. In this sense, the Parliament requests that the inclusion of specific care proposals be evaluated and that “multilevel care continuity be promoted, strengthening the community model”.
From the rostrum, parliamentarians such as Laura Garrido, spokesperson for the PP Cs coalition, consider it unacceptable that patients have had to register in other communities to access care resources that do not exist in the Basque Country. For this reason, the motion asks the Basque Department of Health to establish “specific referral protocols for people with severe eating disorders” and to do so assuming “the corresponding health expenditure”, as occurs in the treatment of other pathologies.
Alexandra Ruíz de Azúa and Aitziber Samaniego, who a month ago agreed to report their case on ABC, have witnessed the debate from the parliamentary tribune. In conversation with this newspaper they claim to be somewhat “overwhelmed” by the dimension that their claim has taken, but at the same time, somewhat more satisfied than a few weeks ago.
Alexandra assures that a priori what Parliament has approved seems “good” to them and can only be understood as a positive step. “It is an approach to what we want and serves to give it visibility,” she says. However, they continue to lack a “firm commitment” that a TCA unit will be created in the Basque Country. “We are cautious,” she acknowledges and asks to wait to see how “everything they have promised they are going to do” materializes.
Alexandra was one of the patients who had to register in another autonomous community and who now has in mind to repeat treatment in a private clinic outside the Basque Country. That is why she finds it hopeful that there is a request for the Basque Health Service to take charge of the costs of treatment outside the Basque Country, but she assures that she will not believe it until she sees that it materializes in concrete actions . “Let’s see what comes out of all this,” she concludes, aware that her claim has achieved a consensus that is very difficult to see in the Basque Parliament.
