Wheelchair user Juan Manuel Colomar has to go to Son Espases Hospital three times a week for dialysis treatment.
However, and as he complains, “nine times out of ten I have problems with the ramp on the bus”. He says that it takes him an hour and a half to get to a bus stop that is far away and that he can then fail to get on the bus.
He is therefore asking Palma town hall and the EMT bus service to adapt the buses that go to Son Espases and Son Llàtzer in a rather better fashion.
“The people who go to hospital have no other option; they don’t do it for their own pleasure.”
He lives in Son Oliva and it is 800 metres to a bus stop. He says that if he misses a bus when he’s going somewhere else, it doesn’t matter, but that if he can’t go for his dialysis, then he could die.
The bus stop in Jacint Verdaguer is the one that functions the best as the platform in front of the school is constantly available to be hooked up. His appointments at Son Espases are at 3.30pm, and if the getting there can be issue, so also can be the going home at nine in the evening.
Bus drivers, he adds, recognise that the situation isn’t good, as the platform isn’t always ready to be hooked up.
When he first started needing dialysis in May this year, he tried the ambulance service, but he gave up with this as on the first day the whole procedure took eleven hours. “I am only fifteen minutes from the hospital.”