Category Archives: Health

The Hospital Joan March, in Distress

Posted by mallorcaphotoblog on

The Hospital Joan March in Bunyola is in a bit of distress. The hospital is set to be closed any time soon. The Govern Balear has run out of money and, seemingly, out of ideas. Recently it was decreed that two hospitals will have to be closed on the island, the Hospital General in Palma, and the Hospital Joan March in Bunyola. Also, the newly built Hospital Son Espases, inaugurated not much more than twelve months ago, will have to close 40 percent of its operating theatres.

It would appear as though the new Balearic government is quick to cut on health and education when the going gets tough.

Why is it that politicians of whichever side of the spectre are always so terribly quick when it comes to invest or, likewise, to cut when in fact so much is at stake every time that more careful thinking and planning would seem so evidently necessary? Can’t they sit down and do some thinking first, perhaps even employ some experts, before they build new motorways, underground transport, airports, hospitals or congress centres, instead of just approving the budget, accepting a customary budget overrun and, once completed, find themselves without any uptake or tenant or without funds to run the thing? It would all seem so easy; why can’t they get it right? Or is it about something else? Is it not about the welfare of the community but instead, about the ego, or about party politics, or simply, about personal gain, kickbacks perhaps? I wish I knew the answers. They all seem a thoroughly untrustworthy lot, they really do.

The photo was taken near Bunyola, Mallorca, Baleares, Spain. The date: May 14th, 2012. The time was 13:43:59 and 13:48:21, respectively.

Death in the Afternoon

Posted by mallorcaphotoblog on

It’s a strange sensation when you see someone dying of a heart attack in front of your eyes and it is not a make-believe death on television, Casualty style. This is what we thought, in any case, a few days ago when a man collapsed in front of everybody’s eyes. Doctors were called and an ambulance who duly arrived in no time at all. The paramedics tried every trick in the book, with chest pumping, oxygen, electric shocks, what have you. It was painful watching for a good 30 minutes when I absented myself, fearing for the worst. The following day I was told that the man had not died but was rushed to hospital where he spent a day or two in the Intensive Care Unit. Yesterday I was told that it did not look good for him; he had not come out of an artificial coma yet and doctors were not very hopeful to be able to save his life.

At about the same hour as this heart attack, a cyclist suffered an attack as well, also near Felanitx, and death was diagnosed when the medics arrived.

Human life is such a frailty and we never think about it.

The photo was taken in Felanitx, Mallorca, Baleares, Spain. The date: May 8th, 2012. The time was 11:56:33.

A Night at the Hospital

Posted by mallorcaphotoblog on

I celebrated my birthday yesterday evening at the hospital.

There was an emergency with a visiting friend, who was suddenly in great pain. Since he was home alone at the time I was asked to go over to help which of course I did. I am not much into birthday celebrations anyway. The house is located just outside of Felanitx. When I got there, we had to call an ambulance. Since they could not understand the rural address, we arranged to meet at the nearby cemetery – perhaps not such a good omen I thought. The ambulance arrived there with the usual delay of 20 minutes and took the friend to the hospital in Manacor. I went along to help with translations. Never mind the birthday and my family. I spent an hour and a half at the hospital without being called in. I finally went home, leaving my friend behind being dealt with in Emergencies.

I have since heard that he was suffering from kidney stones. He was X-rayed at the hospital, given a proper diagnosis, pain killers and infusions. He feels better now but will have to go back to the hospital once back in Germany. He thinks that he was well treated by the doctors in Manacor and the hospital employees; he appreciates the care he received. All was well in the end.

The photos were taken in Manacor, Mallorca, Baleares, Spain. The date: March 16th, 2012. The time was 20:00:42, 20:15:08 and 20:34:16, respectively.

Stephen Hawking in Mallorca

Posted by mallorcaphotoblog on

Three weeks ago, the popular scientist and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking celebrated his 70th birthday. The author of A Brief History of Time was diagnosed with severe symptoms of a type of motor neurone disease from the age of 21. A survival for more than ten years after the diagnosis is unheard of for this illness. In fact, his doctors said at the time that Hawking would not survive more than two or three years.

In 1951, when Stephen Hawking was 8 years old and long before the disease had manifested itself, he came to visit Mallorca for a period of three months. His mother Isobel had just separated from Stephen’s father, Frank Hawking. She came to stay in Deià with her three children on recommendation of Beryl Pritchard, the wife of Robert Graves, the author. Isobel Hawking and Beryl Pritchard had both been studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St. Anne’s College in Oxford.

Several pages are dedicated to Hawking’s visit to Mallorca in the book Wild Olives, Life in Majorca with Robert Graves (ISBN 0-7126-7474-8) by William Graves, the oldest son of Robert Graves and Beryl Pritchard.

The photo shows Stephen Hawking (left) and William Graves in Cannelun, Robert Graves’ house in Deià, in 1951. The photo was borrowed from the Internet, courtesy of robertgraves.org.

Thank you very much.

The Benefits of Progress

Posted by mallorcaphotoblog on

Spain is different from other European countries, or so it seems when you come here from the outside. Perhaps I should better say: Spain was different from other countries twenty, thirty years ago? The national and cultural specifics and habits of a country and society seem to get lost on the way to modernization, on the path to, supposedly, sophisticated progress. The individual suffers from it in the process, at least here in Spain, and gets confused, bewildered and often lonely.

Let’s take an example. When we arrived in Mallorca, in the late Eighties, it would have seemed unlikely that an elderly person, a parent, an old spinster or an elderly relative, would ever be sent into a retirement home. Such old-age pensioners’ homes simply did not exist, to my knowledge. Yes, there were church-run hospices looking after some elderly people who had no family members left to look after them. But, in general, elderly people were looked after and cared for by their own family members. Their very own off-spring or their nieces and nephews would take them into their homes to feed them, care for them, wash them, look after them and assure their well-being.

In the last 20 years, however, this tradition is becoming the exception to the rule. Residencias (care homes) have sprung up everywhere near us, in Campos, Felanitx, Santanyí, Manacor, and families are more willing than ever to let their fathers, mothers, uncles and aunts be looked after and cared for by the national health system and/or the municipal authorities, just like has happened in France, Germany, the Netherlands or the UK some twenty or thirty years earlier.

Perhaps Spain is no different from anywhere else in Europe. Perhaps Spain is just some twenty or thirty years behind the rest of Europe.

The photo was taken in Santanyí, Mallorca, Baleares, Spain. The date: October 3rd, 2011. The time was 17:37:47.

The Annual Olive Harvest

Posted by mallorcaphotoblog on

Whilst Mallorca’s grape harvest makes big headlines every year here and abroad, the island’s annual olive harvest gets underway rather unnoticed and overlooked. I have you know that in the foothills of the Tramuntana mountains this year’s olive harvest began last week. Last year, in 2010, a bumper harvest was recorded amongst Mallorca’s olive groves, resulting in the largest production of olive oil for years, here. This year, the weather was adverse for such record yields due to the unusually long spell of dry conditions and a severe lack of rain. In 2011, it looks like a drastic shortfall in olive reaping will have to be recorded here in Mallorca, albeit with a superior quality when compared with the normal Empeltre (shown here), Arbequina, Picual or Hojiblanca (Mallorca’s main olive varieties) crop. Rumours have it that the quantity of last year’s olive oil pressing resulted in a substantial surplus. It is widely expected that as a result retail price levels for Mallorcan olive oil will come down somewhat. Prices for crude olives are down considerably on last year’s wholesale levels.

Es Fangar, a German-owned, self-proclaimed organic farm in the East of the island seems to have opted for a different strategy. Their self-pressed olive oil combines Picual, Arbequina, Serrana and Villalonga varieties and is retailed almost exclusively in Switzerland, where 500 ml sell for the equivalent of 25 €. It is said to be good, though. Not that I have been to Switzerland recently, and I have not found it in any Mallorcan shops so far.

The pueblo of Caimari will hold its annual Fira de s’Oliva from November 19th to 20th. A Fira de s’Oli i Gerret (a small fish) will be held in Port de Sóller, November 26th and 27th.

The photo was chosen from my archive. It was taken near Caimari, Mallorca, Baleares, Spain. The date: November 12th, 2008. The time was 12:29:47.

Gínjols And Ginjolers

Posted by mallorcaphotoblog on

One of the oldest fruits on the planet is relatively common here in Mallorca, and yet, we do not seem to know much about it. The Mallorcans call the fruit Gínjols (Castellano: Azufaifa); the tree is called Ginjoler (Castellano: Azufaifo).

In the non-Spanish speaking world, Ziziphus Zizyphus (also Ziziphus jujuba) is more commonly known as Jujube, Red Date or Chinese Date. The fruit is well-known across the Arab world, North Africa and the Middle East, in Iraq and Iran, in Southern India and Sri Lanka, where it is widely used in traditional herbal medicine, as well as eaten for food. You may have come across this strange-looking, small fruit in Mallorcan shops and local markets, especially at this time of year.

My Mallorcan friends tell me that they were given a single Gínjol fruit as a reward or a praise for a task well executed when they were children. Other than that, its main use is as a desert, for cakes and for sweet syrups or jellies. I’ve also seen the fruit in its dried version here in Mallorca, when it has a distinctly red colour; dry Gínjol is sold as a dàtil (date).

The crop ripens non-simultaneously, and fruit can be picked in Autumn for several weeks from a single tree. If picked green, Jujubes will not ripen. Ripe fruits may be stored at room temperature for about a week. The fruit may be eaten fresh, dried or candied. Fresh fruit is much prized by certain cultures and is commonly sold in Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Indian markets. Tree-dried fruit stores indefinitely; it dries on the tree without the use of a sulfur preservative.

The fruits are said to cure coughs, resolve any other lung complaints, soothe the internal organs and reduce water retention. The fruit is used in Chinese and Korean traditional medicine, where they are believed to alleviate stress. The fruit apparently also has laxative properties.

A 17th century herbalist (Gerard) is quoted as saying:

The fruit of the Jujube tree eaten is of hard digestion, and nourisheth very little; but being taken in syrups, electuaries, and such like confections, it appealeth and smootheth the roughness of the throat, the breast and lungs, and is good against the cough, but exceeding good for the reines of the back, and kidneys and bladder.

Maybe we should give this little gem another try.

The wood of the Ziziphus jujuba tree is sometimes used to make wind instruments. In Mallorca, the pipes of Xeremíes (Castellano: Gaitas; bagpipes) are occasionally hand-carved from the wood of the Ginjoler tree.

The photo (top) was borrowed from the Internet, courtesy of herbarivirtual.uib.es. The photo (bottom) was also borrowed from the Internet, courtesy of flickr.com and Eric in SF.

Muchas gracias, and

thank you very much.

Son Espases

Posted by mallorcaphotoblog on

Someone should be looking into the flourishing business of hospital construction, here in Mallorca. Something smells to high heaven. I have witnessed the building of new hospitals in Manacor, Inca and Palma (Son Llatzer, and Palmaplanas) over the last 10 or 15 years. Last year, the largest yet, Son Espases, was inaugurated to much fanfare on the outskirts of Palma. Son Espases is massive, easily triple the size of Son Dureta, the hospital which it is meant to replace, and probably double the size of PMI airport. According to figures published on the hospital’s website, 235,000,000 € were spent for the construction of this huge complex, plus another 85,000,000 € for the hospital equipment. I don’t believe a word they say. A blind man can see that much more money than that was spent in Son Espases, in particular when one takes into account the massive road access that has gone hand-in-hand with the hospital project. My guess is the time will come when we find out that a large portion of the current public debt of 5,587,000,000 € of the Illes Balears can be attributed to Son Espases. I would not be surprised if the total bill for Son Espases would be nearer 500,000,000 €, with bribes and kickbacks included to the tune of the customary 20 %.

It makes me cringe to see how very little control there is in Public Spending, here in Mallorca, or anywhere else for that matter. Politicians spend the money that is not theirs and the taxpayers have to foot the bill, again and again. I wish the politicians on both sides of the House would all be sent packing at the next elections, come 20-N (November 20th).

The photo (top) was taken in Palma de Mallorca, Baleares, Spain. The date: September 30th, 2011. The time was 15:10:18. The photo (bottom) was borrowed from the Internet, courtesy of elblogdeunhospital.com.

Muchas gracias.

The Nibbling Wonder Fish

Posted by mallorcaphotoblog on

Every now and then, you pass by somewhere in, let’s say, a place like Palma, and there is something that you had not noticed before. Perhaps it was not there before or perhaps, you simply did not see it even though you may have passed there a hundred times. It happens to me all the time.

Like recently, in Palma’s Calle Unión. There is now a new fish spa called Masyo, a place where one can get all sorts of New Age treatments including ichthyotherapy, a kind of skin and wound cleaning pedicure aiding with problems of psoriasis, epidermis or dermatitis eczema, all done by little nibbling fish. The fish employed for the therapy are of the Garra rufa variety, a warm water fish of Western Asian origin and in particular, the Tigris-Euphrates river system, also known as Doctor fish or Kangal fish. This wonder fish is a toe-sized carp with no teeth who, according to those in the business, likes to suck off dead skin. Apart from the medicinal benefits there are also cosmetic aspects as well as wellness and relaxation perks.

Apparently, the idea of treating foot diseases with nibbling fish goes back to an old Turkish legend about a shepherd who injured his foot and stuck it into a hot spring teeming with small fish. Miraculously, the wound healed, so the news spread quickly. A treatment centre for skin ailments related to the feet grew around the springs near the Turkish town of Kangal. From Turkey, the practice soon spread throughout Asia.

By the latest count, there are now four such enterprises in Palma, the one in Calle Unión, one in Calle Sindicato (called Fishy Feet), one in Paseo Marítimo (called Fishy Spa) and one in Can Pastilla (called Espai Fish). The going rate seems to be 10 € for 10 minutes, 15 € for 20 minutes or 25 € for 30 minutes, including a foot massage. Might be worth you trying if you like your feet.

The photo (top) was borrowed from the Internet, courtesy of blogdefarmacia.com. The photo (bottom) was also borrowed from the Internet, courtesy of espaifish.com.

Muchas gracias.

The 061 Ambulance Service

Posted by mallorcaphotoblog on

It is strange how one never thinks about vital services such as the fire brigade, an ambulance, an emergency doctor or the Guardia Civil, until there is an emergency. Luckily, I did not suffer any such calamity myself but, someone else did yesterday right where I had my afternoon coffee. One of the local elderly lads suffered a serious health attack of some kind and emergency medical services had to be called to his rescue. An ambulance arrived amazingly swiftly together with a paramedic-type doctor. Fortunately, there seemed to be no immediate life-threatening cause for concern. But eventually, the victim was taken away to the hospital in Manacor for further observations. Let’s wish him a speedy recovery.

For as long as I have lived on this island, I have always had the impression that the medical services here in Mallorca were up to scratch. Each larger pueblo has their own sanitary health centre and there are a sufficient number of public hospitals in all the larger places, such as Manacor, Inca, Muro (Alcúdia), Bunyola and so forth. All of this comes under the aegis of IB-Salud, the public health service of the Govern de les Illes Balears. All the larger tourist resorts have a number of privately run medical emergency services functioning on a 24 hours call of duty, at least during the tourist season. In addition and mainly in the Palma area, there are plenty of private hospitals catering for the large number of tourists, the thousands of ex-pats and a large portion of the better-off local community.

For medical emergency calls, there is the 061 system operating a standard telephone number anywhere in Spain for Medicina de Urgencias and Emergencias Servei d’Atenció Medica Urgent like the one needed yesterday in Felanitx. In Mallorca, this 061 emergency service has been in operation since 1992. I think they are doing a great job. Of course, one would also get any kind of emergency help under the 112 number, anywhere in Europe, including Spain and Mallorca.

The photo was taken in Felanitx, Mallorca, Baleares, Spain. The date: June 30th, 2011. The time was 18:14:16.