– This is a difficult matter, is a phrase we like to hear from politicians and bureaucrats, who with a worried expression try to explain why they have to cut offers.
And often it is also right. It can be between plague or cholera, being able to give or having to take. It can be about one or two school classes, a bus or two, single or double rooms.
But the issue of the inpatient unit at the District Psychiatric Center is not difficult, nor is it about a choice. It is of course possible that some board members in Helse Nord think so, but then they are not sufficiently reality-oriented. Then they have probably not done the job they were elected to do and checked what the 24-hour unit actually means, for today’s users, future users and for their relatives.
If they had, for example, contacted the municipal superintendent in Nordreisa, Øyvind Roarsen, they would have received a sparklingly clear answer. His appeal during Monday’s commemoration at Storslett said it all: – A cut is meaningless.
Roarsen pointed to what life had been like during the ten years he worked as a doctor in Nordreisa, without a 24-hour unit. It was a time of forced admissions and patients who did not seek help because they did not want to go to Tromsø and Åsgård. And it will return if Helse Nord chooses to cut the daily unit.
Rut Eili Ruud represents relatives after suicide through the organization LEVE. Her message that more lives will be lost if the inpatient unit is closed should weigh more than an awkward goal to save a few poor millions from a gigantic health budget.
And unfortunately – SV’s Pål Schreiner Mathisen’s claim of a Tromsø arrogance – is not to be believed. To believe that people from North Troms who struggle with drug addiction and psychiatric challenges will get better from being treated in Tromsø is nothing but arrogant.
To believe that the financial crisis and the staffing challenges within Helse Nord will be improved by sick people from Nord-Troms having to leave their safe surroundings and relatives to get help in the city, is also sheer arrogance.
Therefore, the SV politician is also right when he says that if the board of Helse Nord does not now start thinking outside the Tromsø box, then the politicians must take over the management. This is not difficult – the 24-hour unit must live so that people can survive.
