Breathe
By Nurit Martinez
The story of the father who walks in haste from Xochimilco carrying his son wrapped in a petate so that he can receive care at the Children's Hospital in downtown Mexico City, portrayed in the 1972 film Mi Niño Tizoc, is still a reality for many families who, lacking access to health services throughout the country, seek any means to travel to the capital for the hope of life in one of the national health institutes or the specialized ones located in the Doctores neighborhood.
It is only a matter of going to the vicinity of these places to know that there are even families who, even if they are registered in the IMSS, ISSSTE or any other public health service, prefer to go to specialized centers. For this reason, the alert, the red lights and the growing condemnation in the health sector is not minor once the details that anticipate a budget cut of 34% by 2025 have been made public.
We had a six-year period of mobilization of medical residents, specialists, health personnel, managers, associations, patients and parents, an activism not seen since the government of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz in 1965.
José Agustín wrote in Tragicomedia mexicana 1. Life in Mexico from 1940 to 1970 that eight thousand doctors from five hospitals in Mexico City and 48 other centers located in the states began a strike because "the young people were discovering in terror that working for the government (or private initiative) meant falling into exploitation and discomfort without limit" and with this they intended that the government "would hear them and the people would learn of their demands."
Similarly, we saw the mobilizations of doctors, and the government's response was budgetary and labor repression: residents are paid less than the young people who receive scholarships and who are neither educated nor working.
There are new labor spaces in health care that are occupied by doctors coming from Cuba who, in medical practice (due to their technological updating) are less qualified than our young people or our doctors, who do not have adequate salaries, schedules, benefits or remuneration.
What makes the government think that a doctor in training has enough on a minimum wage? During the last few years, the demand was that the misunderstood austerity decisions be corrected.
We understood that a secretary, but especially the undersecretary Hugo López-Gatell, made decisions based on his indoctrination and aversion to those who did not think like him. This is what we are looking for a real transformation.
There is a limit to doing more with less, and health has been the target of this discourse that hides a lack of interest in what happens to the poorest people in the country.
This administration preferred to set up medieval plots against him, instead of proposing forceful solutions. He accused parents of staging coups d'état and, in fact, any mother or father is willing to do anything to save their children's lives, especially if they are told that a cancer has been diagnosed in time and what is lacking are medicines and doctors, spaces for them to be treated.
Fortunately, there are evils that have an expiration date, and the change of government was an opportunity to take the challenge seriously.
But if the budgetary decision that comes from -we do not know from which office without social conscience- decides that, instead of Mexico finally reaching the investment of 6% of GDP in health, it intends to maintain the average of only 2.5% of investment, then it is certain that the political discourse from the National Palace will be repeated with false accusations of plots against the transformation.
The health financing proposal for 2025, as shown by the Center for Economic and Budgetary Research, points to a deterioration in health care, particularly in the Pediatrics, Nutrition and Cancerology institutes.
Hours later, we learned of the leak on social networks of the letter from the director of the Institute of Cardiology, Jorge Gaspar Hernández, in which he warns of "the critical situation we are going through" and lists, among other things, the difficulty in obtaining medical devices, adequate food for the personnel or financing for construction.
A day later, he officially stated on the institution's web page that the rumors that surgeries would be suspended due to lack of supplies "are unfounded" and justified that his previous communication was internal so that there would be a closing of ranks with the institution.
That is not all that happens. The patients of the institute are telling their sorrows for having to buy medicines out of their own pockets, even pacemakers, or to cover the medical supplies if they need to be treated. And this happens in full view of everyone, and no one stops it.
In previous years I have publicly reported that, despite the increase in the number of children with cancer coming from all over the country, nothing led to the authorization of the expansion of the Pediatrics Institute; and now, the institution joins the list of those that will have the largest cuts by 2025.
As I said at the beginning, with this image in which the poorest continue to seek specialized care from well-paid professionals, who have the necessary supplies for the care of their patients, timely diagnoses and access to medicines and not only palliative care.
Access to health care and medicines has a high cost for families without social security. Family expenses have been documented and represent an ever-increasing amount, even for those who have health services, because care is neither timely nor of high quality.
Health care does require reform, but the first is associated with the way in which the service is provided and the other is related to the resources allocated to it.
We have first-rate services, indeed, that compete with the major powers, but there are also second-rate services, third-rate services, services of no reputation and those that can be provided to the poorest population.
What will it take for someone to get serious and take seriously what is happening to the health care system, and for the whole country to have the opportunity to have access to a specialized doctor? Otherwise, families will continue to migrate in search of a hope for life.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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