04/28/2020 11:26
Quim Torra. Newsroom
The suspension of the meeting of the Public Health Advisory Council, the consulting body on the technical and scientific aspects of public health in Catalonia, has generated the rejection of twenty experts in public health and health management who signed an open letter against the Catalan government behavior during the coronavirus health crisis.
The signatories have asked President Quim Torra and the Councilor of Health, Alba Vergés, to reconsider the decision on the meeting, since it is the body that “collects the opinions of the top experts, external to the administrations of our professional field” , they remember.
The Health department denies that the meeting has been canceled and ensures that it will take place next week, El Confidencial publishes, in addition to noting that the convener is its president, Dr. Josep Vaqué, head of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology at the Hospital del Vall d ‘Hebrón de Barcelona, and not the councilor.
“It is important to adequately and proportionally combine the actions and the correct communication of the same, to avoid speculations and emotional aspects that often have a more damaging effect on health than the direct consequences of the same problem”, they point furthermore.
These experts have asked Torra and Vergés for “unitary coherence” in the fight against the pandemic and to avoid “political use”, specifically referring to “sterile controversies about technical elements, as it has sometimes occurred, in our opinion, during the current situation”.
One of the signatories of the letter, the ex-president of the Public Health Society of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, Josep Farrés, has told El País that he considers that “it has become excessively politicized” and that in the current situation “it is very bad to lose the neutrality “, in addition to defining the letter as” an appeal to common sense “.
“At some moments, it seemed that if one said black, the other had to say white. We have heard creepy things, like a counselor who says that with independence there would be fewer deaths. That doesn’t make any sense,” says Farrés.
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