30-year-old cribs and rusty showers in the Materno Infantil
Image of a deteriorated wall of a hospital room. /
Two worlds coexist in the hospital; the decrepit hospitalization area and the modern delivery rooms and consulting rooms
«
You go to a hostel, you see that and you don't stay to sleepeven if you travel with few demands”,
Laura Gallego tells about the impression made on her by the room in which she was placed after giving birth at the Maternal and Child Hospital of Gran Canariajust three weeks ago. “The delivery room is phenomenal. The contrast is brutal. You take a trip back in time and think:
Have I gone to another floor? to another time? to another country?», tells about his recent experience.
After giving birth to her first child there seven years ago,
he knew the rooms looked depressing, so he thought about asking for self-discharge after giving birth. She was unable to execute her plan because her baby was born with a slight fever and she had to spend days under observation.
"The staff do a great job. The midwives are very up to date and make the experience a good one but
the state in which things are is unworthy. It is not understood that the canaries who arrive in this world are received in these conditions, ”highlights the puerperal woman.
And it is that
the hospitalization area is totally outdated and deteriorated: rusty cribs from 30 years ago, dining tables full of rust, peeling walls, cracked armchairs, shower trays plastered a thousand times, buckets without lids where compresses are deposited and lockers from almost 40 years ago.
“After a few days admitted, you dream of your shower.
It gives the feeling of lack of cleanliness, which there is. It is a delicate moment, because you are open in the channel and it scares you, ”confesses Gallego, who believes that the solution is to give it a facelift to dignify the rooms.
two plants less
The two floors of the Materno Infantil dedicated to covid reduce the available space and affect postpartum women whose babies are born with a problem.
Since 2018, in these cases, the hospital applied the
joint hospitalization of mother and baby, avoiding the separation of both. That practice, due to lack of space, has disappeared.
“You have to go down to neonates to be available for on-demand nursing every time the baby wakes up. If we had been together, it would have been better.
Having just given birth, not being able to rest to be down for hours and hours, not being able to be with the baby... It's very hard. Only those who have been through it know that, ”laments Gallego, who believes that these first moments are important to establish bonds, beyond breastfeeding.
In addition, sometimes the maternity area does not have the capacity for all hospitalizations, so some recently delivered have to enter floors dedicated to other pathologies.
The suppression of these two plants for covid also forces postpartum women to share a room. “Not only do we have one patient admitted. She is a lady, who is not sick, with her baby, who has to be with her partner. It is a process of two. The father cannot be left out.
So many people in a room can't move with the cribs. It's frustrating», says a hospital worker.
The children's hospitalization area is also deterioratedexcept for the renewed oncohematology unit.
Maintenance problems force the closure of rooms due to the frequent breakage of the pipes. Besides,
the rooms were designed with a maximum age of 7 in mind, but currently admit patients as young as 14so that beds and rooms are very small to accommodate the sick and their companions, explain hospital sources.
These problems will disappear within four or five years, when the construction of the
Children's Towerstill in the adjudication process.
«
The Maternal and Child Hospital was built 40 years ago and is immersed in a reform process that lasts for years», explains the hospital manager, María Alejandra Torres.
refurbished areas
for now
the intensive care areas, the operating rooms, the gynecological and pediatric emergency areas and the delivery rooms have been refurbished. Outpatient clinics are located in the new Edificio del Mar and now the X-ray, human reproduction and pediatric dentistry units are being expanded.
To these works has just been added the
reform of the fourth floor of pediatric hospitalizationTorres explains.
As for the deterioration of the hospital, he acknowledges that
the facade is damaged and that it cannot be fixed until the planned works in the plants are finished.
Regarding the rest of the hospitalization area, he assures that
maintenance and painting every summer.
