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Monday, 24th February, 2014
BIGASTRO HEALTH CENTRE GETS BACK ITS NIGHT COVER
Having been closed down for over a year, the town of Bigastro will once again have emergency health cover at night, when the service resumes on the 1st of March.
Antonio Ángel Hurtado, the head of the health council and mayor of Almoradí, made the announcement this week, that despite the closure due to cuts to health budgets by the national government since taking office, “the sta-
bility of public finances” now means that the service can resume. Hurtado wanted to make it clear that the decision is not as a result of the countless public protests, nor is it as a result of opposition political groups campaigning for the needs of healthcare in the area, and the decision is not “to get medals”, but “we have had many meetings to get restore service”. Hurtado strongly criticized the PSOE led demonstrations demanding that the service be resumed, especially the criticism already levied towards the PP mayor of the town for not supporting public health needs. In fact, the PP mayor of the town, Charo Bañuls, has now come forward saying that he never agreed with the closure and has repeatedly asked for its reopening. Stability in public finances is seemingly creating a more stable situation for Spain, likely to be ever more apparent as the country creeps closer to the next elections.
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23
FLU EPIDEMIC SHOWS POSITIVE DECLINE Data released on Friday confirms that for the third consecutive week, recorded between the 10th and the 16th of February, there has been a decrease in the number of reported cases of influenza. The current figure is 101.45 cases per hundred thousand inhabitants, with a mixture of A(H1N1)pdm09 at 59% of all cases, and A(H3) with 41%. There has been an increase in cases in the north of Spain, where weather conditions have also been poor, with Asturias, north of Aragon and the east of Catalonia seeing more cases. So far 1,844 people have been confirmed as hospitalized with a severe case of influenza in all communities and there have been 189 deaths. Of those
who have died, 82% were over 44 and 48% were over 64, whereas 94% suffered from a chronic disease and 65% had not been vaccinated.