Death crash highlights route delay

HOSPITAL sources have said that an ambulance could have reached the scene of a death crash sooner if a planned new access road had been built.

A 32-year-old woman died and her two children were injured in a road accident near the Marina Baja hospital in Villajoyosa last week.

Despite the hospital being close by, an ambulance had to make a lengthy detour to reach the scene because of poor road access.

On paper, the Marina Baja hospital in Villajoyosa is easy to reach.

To the rear the Benidorm to Alicante tram stops on its doorstep and in the other direction the hospital is only a few hundred metres from the N332 road.

Despite this proximity, drivers approaching from Benidorm, as well as those leaving the hospital and making for the N332 by-pass, must make a detour of several kilometres.  The turn-off for the hospital is also notoriously easy to miss.

Both hospital staff and patients have regularly complained about the circuitous route to the hospital, and at one stage it appeared that their grumbles had paid off.

In 2009, under the last socialist government, the ministry of Public Works agreed to construct a new access road from the by-pass.  Nothing has been done since then, and if plans exist they are still on the drawing board.