A living history of Basque medicine, it still remembers today those beds in the Basurto hospital that had a bed donated in perpetuity by… and then the name of a high-ranking family. “It was a charitable hospital for needy people and in a very precarious situation,” he recounts. Because Ricardo Franco He has seen how medicine has turned inside out like a sock and has attended all the advances medical, technological and pharmacologicalbut also big human dramas.
He has verified, for example, the great evolution that cancers have undergone. “The first patient I saw was 18 years old and dying of a seminoma, an embryonal tumor that affects the testicle. This kid was hopeless, they had already taken him to Paris to see if they might do something, but he passed away and today very few people die of that”, describe.
The first day he entered the hospital, he was assigned to the Revilla ward, curiously from the one he is speaking from at the moment. “There was a hospitalization floor, and another for tuberculosis patients and an asylum for the solemn poor. When I entered, this hospital was practically on the verge of disappearing. In fact, the Lejona Hospital was being built at that time. And when it was practically finished, and we thought that they were going to transfer us all there, it turns out that there was a technical closure because there was no more money to pay the suppliers. That was a tremendous time because we were in the middle of our training period and we didn’t know what was going to become of us, or if they were going to throw us out on the streets. But the caudillo died and in the transition it was time to save Basurto“, remember.
Exceptional spectator of the whole wheel of health modernity, already under the cover and umbrella of Osakidetza and the Basque Government, highlights, for example, the fundamental advances in radiodiagnosis, or the computerization of systems, “which allowed us to access the data, and to process it”.
progress with cancer
Without hesitation, he highlights the progress in the field of oncohematology, liquid cancers such as leukemia, and cites the example of Josep Carreras. “Life expectancy and prognoses have greatly improved because drugs such as biologicals that provide great solutions have emerged.” During this time all the specialties have been developed because when he entered there was only internal medicine “and the internists were at the same time pulmonologists, rheumatologists, gastroenterologists, neurologists and we did everything”.
Franco was the first head of studies to admit MIR. With such luck, that in the first call he met what is now his wife. So his professional career does not lack romanticism.
But it has also experienced horrific moments, and all the years of ETA lead, with all the attacks and the destroyed bodies. That is why he decided to write a book regarding the health consequences of gun violence. “I have all the newspaper clippings, the news of all the attacks, the bombings, and everything that happened to those people, and the organic consequences of those shrapnel explosions or the explosions of the bombs.”
He was also working on the day of hell in Amorebieta, December 6, 1991, that gruesome traffic accident on the A-8 in which 17 people lost their lives following a collision of 25 vehicles due to the fog. “The cars began to collide in a chain, they began to catch fire and that was terrible,” he explains. And it is that he has suffered moments of a gigantic care burden. “But we endured it stoically because we were aware that we were being very useful“, dice.
He was present at the historic prisoners’ strike where the inmates harmed themselves and to get them admitted they swallowed mattress springs, knives, spoons, or whatever they caught. “They were brought to us guarded by the famous grays, and to go from the emergency room, where the aid station was before, to the entrance, we had to cross the entire hospital. Some were under observation for days to see if they defecated, we would say, all that hardware that they had ingested ”, she reveals, by way of anecdote.
bomb threats
He recounts the escapes of ETA prisoners dressed as orderlies in ambulances, or escaping through the windows with knotted sheets. Because his adventures cover several volumes with bomb threats included. “We had the mayoress of Bilbao admitted when she suffered the attack. Well during the time he was there, there were three bomb warnings. And one night we had to evacuate all the neonates because they were in the Allende pavilion. The next day, we sent her to Madrid because that was unbearable”.
“I have known brutal times of flu with all the beds in the corridors, and the patients died of pulmonary hemorrhages”
The day that Dr. Santiago Brouard was killed was not spared either. “I was on duty, I received the news by phone that we were preparing the blood bank because Dr. Brouard had been injured, although unfortunately the blood was not needed,” he recalls.
Son of a generation educated in serenity, he points out that the coronavirus, despite its magnitude and relevance, is not the first pandemic we have suffered. “I have known brutal times of flu with the Cruces hospital with all the beds in the corridors for several days. We might not cope with the bloody flu, with situations that are also very similar to the coronavirus, because they died of pulmonary hemorrhages”, he explains.
The drama of AIDS
Hardened in the resignation of putting up with whatever was thrown at them, one of the hardest moments was the dawn of AIDS. “The thing is two and three kids between the ages of 18 and 20 died every weekLook what a tragedy. At that moment, the bravest health workers stepped forward to dedicate themselves, exclusively and without any effective remedy, to caring for them”. “There were also people, who often, due to their drug-addicted condition, presented very complicated pictures, with great agitation that made them throw jugs of water at our heads. Therefore, we had to put plastic bottles”. “The treatment we gave them was completely inoperative at first because there was no therapy. They died, of course, and it was a huge tragedy because they were very young people, imagine with very young parents. It was also the most democratic thing there was, in the sense that it affected all social classes”.
“With the beginnings of AIDS, two or three kids between the ages of 18 and 20 died every week. Imagine the drama”
In recent times, Dr. Ricardo Franco has presided over the Academy of Medical Sciences that brings together different professions of Health Sciences with the aim of cooperating to achieve a single health that offers the best possible care. It is there where in the last week of Humanities they have addressed the diseases that the future will bring us.
“Climate change fosters variation and metamorphosis of ecosystems and transmittable agents. Mosquitoes travel by plane. So, you can have dengue in Zornotza from a man who has just arrived from the Amazon, or Zika from someone who comes from Brazil”.
Pandemics of the future
“Of course there will be more pandemics, I’m sure there will be, because a virus also needs to colonize someone to live”he says without hesitation. “The biological mandate of any living being is to grow and multiply at the expense of whoever. What he wants is to perpetuate himself and if he has to mutate to distract your immune system so that you can’t attack him, he does it”. “The problem is that if we modify the environmental conditions, the ecosystems will change. We have never had heat waves as extreme as last year and that has consequences ”, he explains.
At present he attends the problem of Primary Care in astonishment. “There is a great flight of professionals and it is serious because it is a fundamental pillar of health. Now the system is faltering and that is why the people are revolting, and they are demonstrating. Perhaps it is necessary to promote dialogue because there is very little communication, we would say, between the management leadership and the staff. I believe that what has failed is that the staff, who are highly qualified and highly vocational, are not happy because they have enormous workloads and because they do not have the freedom to organize their own schedules. They have to see 60 or 70 patients in eight hours. And that is impossible because they cannot dedicate even five minutes to the patient. It is as if a teacher has to teach algebra in five minutes ”, he concludes.