The news published yesterday by La Vanguardia in which it was explained that some toilets from the Santa Coloma de Gramanet primary care emergency center (Barcelona) had been planted by the cockroach plague that has affected the center for a little over a year and a half It has created a lot of stir. So much so that the Town Hall issued a statement alleging, on the one hand, that they had indirect knowledge of the plague on April 6 and, on the other, asking the Department of Health to carry out "the necessary measures" to control the plague. and thus "reestablish an adequate work environment."
Other political formations also reacted. Ciudadanos, for example, registered in the Parliament several questions in which he questions Salut regarding "how much longer will he wait to give the order to fumigate the CUAP in the face of the cockroach plague."
Despite these reactions, neither Salut nor the ICS have the intention, at least in the short term, to carry out an emergency intervention in the center. As this newspaper explained yesterday, their will is to carry out again the actions that worked in 2022, which helped -they assert- to "control the plague" and which they have repeated, especially this Holy Week, achieving, they argue, "a significant reduction in the plague" after detecting again the presence of cockroaches in the center. They do not have, for the moment, the intention of fumigating, as some political formation asks them to do.
In the explanations provided by Salut on Wednesday to this newspaper, they stressed that "the application of chemical treatments (fumigation) is only advisable when the other non-chemical measures have not worked." It is plain to see, wield the affected toilets, that the latter have shown themselves to be completely insufficient.
The actions carried out by Salut both in 2022 and 2023 include physical measures - placing sticky traps in different spaces; wood sealing; improvement of the sanitation installation or partial removal and renewal of the false ceiling-, such as chemicals, with the performance of chemical treatments through a gel at different points.
Precisely yesterday, and as some of the CUAP workers have explained to this newsroom, operators from a pest control company went to the radiology service, located on floor -1, which is the one that concentrates a major problem, to put sticky traps back.
They also opened the records of the downspouts to locate poison, a substance that they placed in the records of the sewers. "But what do we do only with poison?", ask the toilets. “Poison is a possible solution when you have four cockroaches, but we have a huge infestation. They are conservative measures ”, they lament.
Some of these employees met this Wednesday with heads of the ICS Barcelonès Nord Occupational Health Unit. They were informed –according to what they say- that the actions to be carried out by Salut would focus “on cleaning the downspouts and covering holes”, something that filled them with despair.
Especially when they were warned, they argue, that these actions would take time to be carried out. And it is that first you have to prepare the project, then approve it, later tender it and finally award it. "We asked them if that meant having to wait six months, and they said they hoped to be able to do it sooner, although they couldn't confirm it."
The biggest problem, they argue, is that they will have to wait an indefinite time for actions that they are convinced will not solve the problem, as has happened before.
They also wonder what will happen in the meantime. In this sense, they report that yesterday they were able to speak (via social networks) with the mayoress of Santa Coloma de Gramanet, Núria Parlon, and that she assured them that the Consistory was "starting at that very moment" to find out what solutions it was going to raise Salut in the short term while the project of works that still have to be elaborated and that can take months to be carried out is not carried out.
The toilets denounce that they have been enduring a plague of cockroaches -which mainly affects the radiology service, located on the -1 floor of the CUAP- for more than a year and a half. They say that one fine day they began to detect several insects in each of the shifts. Soon there were already five; later 7, 15…. and so on until reaching the current situation: "In the morning shift on Holy Thursday we killed 80."
They have to deal with insects even in the room where they eat. “You don't know where to sit. While you eat, insects fall on you. It's like a scary movie. They come out everywhere: ventilation holes, walls, lamps… I had never experienced it in my life”. Due to the situation, several toilets have taken leave due to stress.
Radiology is the only care service located on the -1 floor, which also houses the pharmacy, the workers' changing rooms and the laundry.
