The base of the SEM ambulance in Breda will be moved to Hostalric during this month of April within the restructuring of health transport promoted by the Departament de Salut with the new service contract. The decision has provoked the rejection of the Breda City Council, which has already approved a motion to ask that the loss of the service be reversed or that support measures be activated.
Rejection of the plenary of Breda
The council considers that the departure of the vehicle from the municipality implies a loss of guarantees in the speed of action in emergencies. The approved motion demands that the Departament de Salut maintain the current coverage or adopt compensatory solutions to prevent the change from affecting the attention to residents.
The municipal concern focuses on the disappearance of the physical presence of the ambulance in Breda, an element that the City Council directly links to the response capacity in urgent calls within the municipal area.
Salut frames the change in the reorganization of the service
The transfer is part of the reorganization of health transport derived from the new ambulance contract of the SEM. From the Health Region of Girona, its manager, Jaume Heredia, has defended that the ambulances are not assigned to a single municipality and that they work within a broader territorial logic.
"They are not assigned to a single municipality" - Jaume Heredia, manager of the Girona Health Region
Heredia has also specified that the ambulance located until now in Breda performed about 310 services in the municipality during the last year, while the rest of the assistances, until reaching approximately 1,200 in total, were carried out outside Breda.
The SEM maintains that coverage will remain guaranteed
The emergency system maintains that Breda will continue to be covered despite the change of base to Hostalric. That is the argument with which Salut defends a reorganization which, in any case, has opened a new front with the City Council, which insists that the withdrawal of the vehicle from the municipality weakens the immediate response in critical cases.
With the move scheduled for April, the debate is now situated between the territorial planning of the SEM and Breda's claim to keep an ambulance with a stable presence in the municipality.