With no drugs or beds available, Paraguay’s health system collapses in the face of COVID-19

Without vaccines or basic drugs to fight COVID-19, Paraguay’s main public hospitals collapsed on Wednesday and they found themselves unable to receive patients in intensive care units, At the same time as the country’s doctors demand that a total quarantine of two weeks be decreed to stop the infections.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health said that all scheduled surgeries in public hospitals across the country have been suspended indefinitely allocate resources to the fight against the pandemic.

Although the novel coronavirus has so far claimed the lives of 3,218 people, a figure well below that of its neighbors in the region, Paraguay is short of basic supplies and drugs, including atracurium and midazolam, and no beds in the public system.

“We don’t have x-rays, nasogastric tubes, we don’t have basic drugs. We are no longer silent. We are saying enough to the government, ”he told the agency. AP the pulmonologist Carlos Morínigo, head of the respiratory contingency of the National Institute of Respiratory and Environmental Diseases (Ineram), the best equipped in Asunción.

Morínigo and twenty doctors and nurses they demonstrated in front of the hospital blocking the street intermittently. Medical staff were joined by relatives of ICU patients who shouted “We want supplies” and “Enough injustice”.

Morínigo admitted that the drugs are not available in the local market and that the lack of supplies adds that population “He lives in a relaxed situation, playing soccer and volleyball with friends, without social distancing or following health protocol.”

“Medical supplies had to be purchased before this saturation of services. I call on people and parents not to send their children to school. If they get sick, there are no beds in the hospitals, ”he said.

Along with the demonstration in Asunción, the Paraguayan Association of Nurses denounced in a statement, quoted by the agency EFE, that “citizens cannot continue to suffer from the lack of these vital patient supplies” and to resort to funds allocated by the government for the pandemic.

And it is that in March 2020, the government obtained the approval of a loan of 1600 million dollars to deal with the coronavirus.

Both in the declaration of the association and in the protest vaccination of all health workers and citizens has been requested, and the population was urged to avoid the crowds as they are at the “most critical point” of the pandemic.

Ineram director Felipe González told radio stations in Asunción that he had made his post available to the health ministry. “Because there are no drugs and infected people keep coming to the hospital.” He added that he had not yet received a response from the ministry.

Gladys Martínez, who has her mother in intensive care at Ineram, told by phone to AP What “I went to pharmacies for atracurium and medazolam (a muscle relaxant and a sedative) for 24 hours of treatment but the budget is five million guaranies (about $ 850). It’s a catastrophe”.

María Cristina González, who has been accompanying her husband who has been hospitalized at the same medical center since January 14, said that “among other members of my family and friends, I have collected around 60 million guaranies ($ 9,000) to buy medication.

Faced with complaints, Derlis León, director of supply at the Ministry of Health, announced that he had delivered 4,000 doses of atracurium and 5,000 doses of medazolam to Ineram. “There are no more because the laboratories are unable to produce what is needed due to the high demand, but in two weeks more doses will be received.”, he clarified.

Without beds in the public system, doctors call for total quarantine

The collapse of health also means that beds are no longer available in the public system to treat new COVID-19 patients, Although there are still 50% (or 39 beds) of those who belong to private sanatoriums and have been made available to the Ministry of Health, as Dr José Zarza, president of the Association of Private Sanatoriums of Paraguay. ABC.

Private sanatoriums still have more beds available than the 78 offered to the public system, although these are normally used by their own patients.

In response to the lack of space and medicines, members of the Paraguayan medical circle called on the government to order full quarantine for two weeks to deal with growing infections.

“We collapsed in hospitals, we collapsed in ambulances and the supply of medicines, we collapsed in everything,” Dr Gloria Merza, who heads this entity, told the ABC.

President celebrates “good results”

Meanwhile, President Mario Abdo Benítez posted a video on his Facebook account in which he claimed the country has done well in containing and treating COVID-19.

During a public event in the town of Caacupé, 55 kilometers east of Asunción, the president said that “if I am infected, I will enter Ineram because the best doctors are there”.

Weeks ago The Russian Investment Fund delivered to Paraguay 4,000 purchased 1-million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine. According to the Minister of Health, Julio Mazzoleni, the rest of the vaccines will arrive in the coming weeks depending on the availability of the Russian laboratory.

At the same time, Paraguay is awaiting the arrival of three million vaccines via the COVAX system, created by the United Nations and several international organizations to guarantee equitable immunization against COVID-19.

These announcements are in stark contrast to the optimistic 7 million doses the government announced long ago, while Paraguay, with a population of 7.6 million, has so far recorded 161,530 cases of the new coronavirus, with 3,218 deaths and 135,373 recovered.

KEEP READING: