Breathe
By Nurit Martínez
The lack of a drug at a key moment of a disease such as any type of cancer should be a cause for sanction in the public health system. If a federal or local official recognizes that he or she is missing between 30% and 60% of the medicines, what sanction should he or she be subject to?
The determination should be so blunt, it is called public administration and poor management. However, in such a complicated and messed up chain in the purchase of medicines in Mexico, there are multiple justifications for public officials to avoid penalties for shortages.
In the week just ending, the Secretary of Health in Durango, Moisés Nájera Torres, reported that in General Hospital 450 the shortage is one out of every two medicines; in Health Centers 1 and 2, six out of every ten medicines are missing; and in the State Cancer Center (Cecan), three out of every ten medicines are missing.
"We are buying, we have a 70 percent supply and there are medicines available for the population," he explained to the local media as a "minor thing".
This is just a sample of what the population has been facing for the last seven years with the Fourth Transformation and its Second Floor. So far, no massive purchase scheme has been efficient and free of corruption.
Last week, President Claudia Sheinbaum had to come out in her Mañanera del Pueblo to reveal that in her administration the first case of corrupt collusion in the purchase of medicines was detected: workers-bureaucrats-politicians-politicians-managers-companies. One more case related to the purchase of health supplies since this mechanism was created in the times of the National Action Party.
In the first mega drug purchase of her administration, the president had to acknowledge a possible damage to the public administration for a cost overrun of 13 billion pesos in the purchase of 174 medicine keys.
Among the officials in charge of the mega acquisition is a man from the president's inner circle in Mexico City, Iván de Jesús Olmos Cansino, former legal director of the Superior Audit Office of Mexico City.
In only six months at the head of Laboratorio de Biológicos y Reactivos de México (Birmex), Olmos Cansino, his team and health sector officials already face a "broad" corruption investigation for the overpriced acquisition, although he said that the process was stopped.
The framework and mechanism are there, regardless of whether in this space they have sought to clean up and make efficient the purchase of medicines, supplies and medical equipment.
President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo stated that "they are conducting an investigation, beyond the number of officials, they are conducting a broad investigation and there will be the sanctions that will be imposed".
Until now, neither the military nor the trusted personalities enjoyed the trust of former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, such as Pedro Mario Zenteno and retired military officer Jens Pedro Lohmann Iturburu.
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