Tired of waiting for a PET scan at the Carlos Andrade Marín Hospital, of the Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security (IESS), in Quito, to find out the exact site of a cancer, initially diagnosed in the thyroid, a woman and her family did not wait any longer and decided to do it in another country.
They had entered the documents on March 22 at that health home, but until the beginning of May there was no response.
They put together a lightning trip of a few days and although the husband has an independent job in the economic area, those days he left it and was focused on the health of his partner.
‘How they play with the health of the poor, in more than two years we have not got an appointment or there is no material for cures’: the health emergency cannot overcome the lack of medical supplies
Mariana already had the management done and permission from her work for the gallbladder surgery, on May 19. It was the second rescheduling for this operation at the Los Ceibos hospital of the IESS, in Guayaquil. However, they called her to explain that they were going to reschedule her, because there was no general anesthesia, that they needed to prioritize other areas.
The 53-year-old patient came with her hospitalization order and realized that several patients had already been removed from the surgery schedule; others did enter. She informed her relatives and her work of this news, and regretted that members have to go through these inconveniences to access the interventions.
Tomás Arellano, 52, dislocated his shoulder when he made a sudden movement. It has happened six times in the last seven years, due to injury. His diagnosis is a humeral head fracture, which causes his arm to disconnect from the shoulder. The postponement for surgery continues.
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And it is that the shortage of medicines and medical devices in the public health system not only affects out-of-pocket expenses, that is, when the citizen finances a significant part of health spending with direct disbursements, but also labor productivity.
According to the Ministry of Public Health (MSP), the weakening in the provision of health services due to impediments to timely access to health interventions as a result of drug shortages can increase work absenteeism.
This, added that State portfolio, with the consequent reduction in productivity of the affected population and the drop in income of the productive chains, directly affecting the consumption of households, companies and the State.
“The increase in mortality, which must be mitigated immediately, is immersed in a loss of productivity related to the years of healthy life lost due to premature mortality, shortening the average life expectancy of the population,” according to a study from last June .
The document refers to the executive decree of June 17, in which President Guillermo Lasso ordered the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) to declare an emergency in the health sector through a reasoned resolution in order to speed up the supply of medicines and inputs necessary to operate the comprehensive public health network.
This state network is made up of the MSP, the IESS, the Armed Forces Social Security Institute (Issfa) and the Police Social Security Institute (Isspol).
The health emergency is underway, although the application in each subsystem has been done differently.
The economic impact of lost productivity would be equivalent to the years of healthy life lost multiplied by the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, mention the document.
This State portfolio maintained that the estimate of the loss of productivity due to the shortage of medicines and medical devices in its establishments to treat the diseases that caused the most deaths in 2022, considers an average absenteeism of 13.4 days.
In addition, the economic cost that this would cause was estimated at $19.1 million that households and the economy would not perceive due to the lack of medicines. (YO)
Source: Eluniverso
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
