Last July, the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, created the Health advice one of the pieces that had to change in the middle of the legislature. He opted for a more technical profile that could open a new stage in relations with professional associations, unions and political groups and that could address the two major issues that the region then had on the table: waiting lists and the Nile virus crisis.
The new new advisor, Pilar Hernandezfaced his first debate in the Andalusian Parliament on the situation of one of these problems, the West Nile virus, with an outstretched hand and announcing improvements in the control system from 2025, so that for the next season they will be new agricultural, environmental, urban planning and research measures are underway to continue advancing in the prevention and control of the disease.
But he didn’t even have a hundred days of courtesy. As the spokesperson for Por Andalucía pointed out, Inma NietoThe new advisor has “subrogated all the problems that Catalina García had before.” And one of the most recent fronts is the preventive management of this crisis and the coordination between institutions.
The councillor defended her management and tried to update during her appearance before the plenary session of Parliament the information she had already released in recent days. In addition, He reached out to all institutionssya political groups to jointly advance preventive treatments and address this health crisis in a coordinated manner.
In his management report, he defended that since March more than a thousand actions have been carried out and recalled that there are “Evidence of West Nile virus in Andalusia since 2010“, a reference that the opposition interpreted as the Andalusian government blaming the previous socialist legislatures for the situation that has arisen in recent months.
Thus, he indicated that the system of traps of the plan against the West Nile virus, installed in the areas where the incidence of transmissible mosquito species is detected, already extends to more than thirty municipalities of the provinces of Cadiz, Seville, Huelva, Cordoba and Jaén. The latter province joined the process this week with the installation of thirteen traps once the increase in incidence was detected. In fact, the last death (the eighth) that the Ministry of Health does not currently recognize as exclusively linked to this infection resides in this province.
The traps help control the transmissible species and their incidence. And in fact, data analysis reflects the increase in mosquito numbers this year. In 2023, the measurement systems captured throughout the year 55,000 copies. This year, however, in a single day, that number reached 16,000. Rocío Hernández admitted that there are “factors that escape us” that could explain the increase in mosquito density this year.
The Minister of Health, Rocio Hernandezdefended the “transparency” of its actions and the prevention systems put in place with the aim of “facilitating the early detection of the increase in the density of transmitting mosquitoes in order to inform the local administrations concerned so that they can intensify surveillance, treatment and communication actions. In this sense, it differentiated the powers that the Council and the rest of the administrations should assume.
In any case, Rocio Hernandez, It was noted that 80% of those infected are asymptomatic and that less than 1% of those infected become seriously ill with neurological effects such as meningitis, encephalitis or flaccid paralysis. However, there have already been seven deaths in Seville (plus the case of Jaén with other pathologies). These victims were present at the appearance of the councilor.
The opposition was unanimous in criticizing the Ministry management and “lack of transparency”as well as the lack of coordination with the municipalities and the distribution of competences. Thus, the opposition as a whole criticized the fact that responsibility was left in the hands of the municipal councils, most of them small and with few resources, and the PSOE spokesperson for health, María Ángeles Prieto, denounced a “disastrous management” , lack of foresight and lack of coordination with the rest of the institutions. The socialists stressed that the current situation, with the magnitude of the spread of the virus throughout the autonomous community, comes from a “lack of foresight and prevention, which should be the first step”. For this reason, he called for the dismissal of the Director General of Public Health and the Secretary General. The representatives of Adelante Andalucía, Por Andalucía and Vox expressed themselves in similar terms, calling for responsibility in the management of the West Nile virus crisis in the autonomous community and the lack of control and coordination measures.
The PP, for its part, denounced, through Beatriz Jurado, the “lies and manipulations of the opposition” and specifically highlighted the Provincial Council of Sevillewhose president, Javier Fernandez, accused him of not having adopted preventive measures.
