I’ve not been that efficient at blogging this month, but El Rubio has been ill again(!) so he has been home from nursery creating havoc in the house instead.

The Junta de Andalucia (kinda andalucian government) have made some efforts recently to make things a bit more userfriendly. A much needed step! Part of this has been to introduce a Service called Salud Responde, a telephone service open 24/7 for you to book appointments with the doctor or ask questions.

This is brilliant, as they previous way was an utter waste of time. To see the doctor in our small local health centre you had to get up early in the morning, queue with all the other ill people or just people having their prescriptions renewed (80% elderly people who would start the line at 7, the doctor arrived at 8 ) get a number when the doctor arrived and then estimate when it might be your turn. So if say, your number was 26, you then had to try to suss out how long it would take for the 25 patients before you to be seen which meant you always ended up waiting at least at hour because you didn’t want to get there too late and miss your turn.

Going to a health centre in a nearby larger town meant trying to call around 10 times to make an appointment and being on hold for 10 minutes. So I am so chuffed with this new system.

The telephone number for Salud Responde is 902 505 060. I don’t think they speak other languages than Spanish, but I have not tried. Obviously this could be dependant on the operator you get through to.