In Los Ríos, patients from the public network could be left without dialysis and in Azuay there is a lack of medicines for catastrophic illnesses.
Despite the fact that the Ministry of Economy and Finance allocated $ 150 million to meet the providers of the Ministry of Public Health (MSP), the administrators of the medical centers that provide their services to the users of the public network continue to wait for the payment of pending obligations, which were inherited from the previous government, according to the current regime.
The lack of payment to providers, as well as the shortage of medicines, is suffered by patients not only in large cities such as Quito and Guayaquil, where protests have already occurred, but also in provinces such as Los Ríos, where they are about to run out of service. dialysis, for example.
The urgency is so great that the administrators of the three hemodialysis units that operate in this province, in the Babahoyo, Ventanas and Vinces cantons, plan to form a commission, travel to Quito and request to be received by the Health Commission of the National Assembly to expose the financial crisis they are going through.
Carolina Estupiñán, general administrator of the Los Ríos Hemodialysis Unit, assures that the State, through the Ministries of Finance and Public Health, owes them $ 4,210,452 for the service they provide to more than 480 patients.
That figure is the one that has been accumulating since November 2019.
“For 19 months we have not received a single dollar from the Ministry of Finance, despite the insistence and countless steps we have made before the Health Zonal Coordination, Los Ríos Government, etc.”, said Estupiñán.
The representative of the unit mentioned that until now they have been able to support themselves and attend to the patients referred to them by the public system with the payment made by the Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security (IESS) for attending to its affiliates. But they can’t anymore.
“The situation is already worrying, the administrative staff is up to date, but we can’t do it anymore because our suppliers demand their payments from us. We ask (the MSP) to cancel us so as not to stop caring for patients, since taking this decision they would be the most harmed, ”says Estupiñán.
The situation is difficult despite the fact that the entity has had the support of the Los Ríos Prefecture to maintain the infrastructure of the parent unit and expand one of its rooms, which is located in Babahoyo. Without that help, the outlook would be worse today.
This medium consulted the communication department of the Government of Los Ríos, as representative of the Executive in the province, about the requests that the Hemodialysis Unit has sent to have their providers canceled, but that, according to them, up to have not had an answer at the moment.
Said department reported that they have asked the MSP’s zonal coordination for the status of payments to these units and that they are awaiting these reports. But until press time the required information has not been provided.
The MSP and the IESS announce massive purchase of medicines to solve the shortage before the end of the year
The national government says that it will comply with the companies and institutions that provide services to the MSP, among which are dialyzers, clinics, hospitals, the Guayaquil Charity Board, and the Society for the Fight Against Cancer (Solca).
There are also complaints against the IESS hospital in Ambato for lack of medicines in its facilities. “There is not even Ibuprofen,” said the husband of a user outside that center, where there is also a lack of supplies for operations and the shifts for exams are far away.
According to Santiago Apunte, Administrative director of the IESS Ambato hospital, who acknowledged that not all medicines are available, the shortage has an explanation.
After the vaccination process against COVID-19, people have massively approached the hospital to receive care for different pathologies, which has caused the rotation of medicines and supplies to be consumed more quickly. He was not ready for that demand, he admitted.
That health house has 71% supply of drugs and 73% of medical supplies, said the official, who hopes that with the latest purchases this year, 90% of the medicines will be reached.
In Cuenca, the Vicente Corral Moscoso hospital, administered by the MSP, is the largest in the southern region. An average of 825 patients a day are treated there in External Consultation since last August, after an epidemiological analysis of the city after the massive vaccination against COVID-19, all its services were resumed. The medical staff receives an average of 200 other patients arriving in the emergency area.
The users are not only from Cuenca and other cantons of Azuay, they also come from neighboring provinces and even receive members of foreign colonies, such as Venezuela, which are around 15,000 in this city alone, according to studies by the Foundation Making Panas.
Despite the massive number of patients, who came for hypertension; diabetes mellitus, fractures, diseases of the digestive system, liver damage, among other ailments, according to an internal statistical table, in this hospital there are no major claims for medicines.
María José Vázquez, director of the Vicente Corral Moscoso, that is because they have 80% of the medicines in the basic table available in their warehouses, and the goal is to reach 100% in the first months of 2022.
This year, the budget of this hospital was $ 34 million, an amount that Vásquez expects to be maintained for 2020, which will allow them to implement projects such as the pediatric ICU and ICU for adults, as a priority to maintain the quality of care.
In the IESS José Carrasco Arteaga hospital, on the other hand, the claims of the affiliates for the lack of medicines for people with catastrophic illnesses continue. A group of patients held a sit-in on Monday.
Carolina Cantuña, president of Fundación Pide, which supports patients with primary immunodeficiency, commented that this is a protest for health, since there are no basic medicines for them such as immunoglobulin, so they demanded that the authorities buy it in a way immediate.
The last formal and written request they made was on October 28, but according to Cantuña, they have not been answered. Only in Cuenca 46 citizens are under this condition. (I)
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