Casimiro Curbelo
Strong public health is one of the best guarantees of equality. When a person gets sick, they need quality care, professionals to care for them, and services within their reach. In the Canary Islands, this requires taking into account our territorial reality. Living on a non-capital island poses difficulties that administrations have the obligation to compensate for.
In La Gomera we know well what it means to leave the island to receive health care. Added to the concern about health are travel preparations, distance from family and, in many cases, the need to have someone to accompany us. Therefore, expanding the island's health services means much more than opening facilities: it allows more people to receive care close to home.
With this purpose we have worked to promote the improvements that La Gomera healthcare needs and monitor the commitments made. The implementation of the Alajeró Local Clinic is one of the advances that we must recognize, as well as magnetic resonance imaging and many other services that have arrived on the island in recent years as a result of the work and collaboration between administrations. But there are still needs to be met and projects that cannot be delayed.
One of them is the Multipurpose Day Hospital of the Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe Hospital. The action, budgeted at around 1.1 million euros, includes an endoscopy room, five care boxes and three consultation rooms. Its implementation will allow expanding care in La Gomera and avoiding travel to receive treatments and perform tests that can be done here.
We must also advance in the new La Lomada Local Clinic, for which Health has announced the start of works in the first quarter of 2027. Added to this project is the expansion of the Valle Gran Rey Health Center, another of the actions necessary to improve care on the island, as well as the incorporation of two new ambulances.
Improving healthcare also involves supporting those who need to cover the costs of a surgical intervention or acquire prosthetic material. The Cabildo of La Gomera contributes to this with health aid, to which we have allocated 2.5 million euros in the last year. They are resources that help alleviate the economic burden of families and ensure that the lack of means is not another obstacle to taking care of their health.
All this work requires resources, planning and perseverance. Our responsibility is that the commitments have a budget and are translated into services that citizens can use. Each pending project responds to a specific need and deserves follow-up until it becomes a reality.
We will continue working in that direction, recognizing the progress and claiming what is still missing. Those of us who live in La Gomera must be able to take care of our health with the same opportunities as the rest of the Canarian population, without residing on a non-capital island posing an added difficulty.
