“If some have misinterpreted my words or have not been appropriate, I am deeply sorry.” Thus the PP senator from Huelva, Carmelo Romero, tried to apologize, through a video broadcast on his Facebook, for the statements made this week during a debate on local television, Huelva antenna, on taking responsibility in the screening crisis. What he said leaves little room for interpretation: “Whoever didn’t call these 2,317 women, is it Juanma Moreno who said not to call them; is it the councilor, who said not to call them? Those who should call them, a medical team, didn’t do it. It means that those who should resign are precisely the doctors or those in charge who made this mistake.”
Romero’s statements sparked immediate outrage from health workers. “It is shameful and a bad loser to want to look for scapegoats when the one ultimately responsible for what is happening is President Moreno Bonilla, who in turn appointed an incompetent advisor, who in turn has no control over his direct subordinates in the chain of command: director of the SAS and directors-directors of hospitals and hospital areas. This is where the responsibility for management goes,” explained Victorino Girela, head of the Health area of the CSIF in Andalusia. newspaper.
CC OO’s reaction was along the same lines. “The statements of this political official of the PP seem unworthy to us and it is a method to divert attention from what really happened: that there was a political decision not to call these women. And this decision cannot be made by anyone. Only a political official appointed by the Andalusian Government can take it,” said Nuria Martínez, its Institutional Secretary.
The Andalusian Council of Medical Associations expressed the discontent that its delegation in Huelva had previously expressed at realizing that Romero’s words “attack the honor, reputation, integrity and credibility of an entire profession”, and called for a rectification and public apology from the senator. After his new statement, in which in addition to underlining that if his intervention “was interpreted as a reproach to health workers”, it was not “his intention”, he defends his role as a pillar of public health, the collegial body “was satisfied”, according to sources in the Andalusian Council.
Romero’s correction comes after the Minister of Health, Antonio Sanz, publicly and categorically disqualified him. “I cannot share these demonstrations. I reject this type of demonstration”, underlined the popular leader, who defended that “the work of health workers cannot be questioned”. The words of the PP senator who denounces the doctors also call into question the strategy that his formation is developing in the community to refute the criticisms of the opposition, identifying the questioning of the political management of healthcare with the questioning of the activity of healthcare workers and causing the left to incite violence towards the sector. “There are health workers who already complain about the manipulation they are using against the system, which is creating a situation of risk: there are radiologists who today received verbal threats and one day we will arrive at a violent reaction,” said President Juan Manuel Moreno, in the last control session in Parliament.
This same week, Sanz fired the man who had been director of the Virgen del Rocío when the problems with screening began, Manuel Molina, who currently held the position of territorial delegate of Health in Seville, and replaced him with Silvia Pozo, a city councilor who facilitated the meeting between the councilor and the president of Amama, an association to which he is very close. This nomination was interpreted as a wink and a further attempt to help women who are victims of delays in mammography diagnoses, shocked by the attacks of Andalusian PP parliamentarians.
