To date, only 2% of the 1,714 first-level care centers in the country’s southern regions are in good condition, while only three of the 50 hospitals have the infrastructure, services, and minimum staff to provide adequate attention to citizens.
Furthermore, along with the eastern macro-region, the south has the worst prevalence figures. childhood anemia: About half of the children of 6 to 35 months suffer from this disease.
Similarly, the advance of vaccination against COVID-19Important, both in the case of children and adults: 41% of the population in this region of the country still do not have a complete plan.
Despite this, in 2022 the southern regional governments stopped implementing S/402’722,278, and the Comptroller’s Office has issued more than a hundred reports for alleged irregularities in the region.
Alfredo Celis, Vice Dean of the Medical College of Peru, points out that, due to the current context of road blockades, care for various diseases has become even more difficult in the South, where there were already a large number of patients with various diseases on waiting lists, postponing them due to the pandemic COVID-19,
“Supplies and medicines are not coming, and there are patients who need immediate treatment and operations. There is no hospital to take care of them and currently we cannot shift them”. Sellis holds.
Percy Maya-Tristan, director of research at the Scientific University of the South, noted that there are peculiarities in the South that make it difficult to close the gap. “We have a population at high altitude, where it is difficult to provide health services; There are language-related problems and the system has not yet fully adapted to interculturality”, he stressed.
Failure of decentralization for health
Meta-Tristan argues that decentralization failed in its objective of improving the health system and conditions in each region. “By moving the health work to the regions, because they knew the situation better, supposedly they would be able to solve the problems better, but it is clear that this is not the case,” he insisted.
According to the researcher, this situation has contributed to the atmosphere of unease that is now visible in the protests nationally.
“This is clearly troubling, as citizens see a difference in how their region has progressed compared to others and the claim is transferred to a national government, when the first responsibility lies in the regions. We see that there is a lot of corruption and a lot of money is not executed”. Indica.
The health system in the country has been in a critical state for more than 20 years. Although the pandemic was an opportunity to reform the system, Maya-Tristan points out that the opportunity was lost and the consequences dire.
after covid-19
For his part, Alfredo Celis points out that one of the main problems facing the health system is the coverage in care of all the diseases that were left aside during the pandemic: diabetes, hypertension, cancer, among others. For the Vice Dean of CMP, there are several factors that have exacerbated the context.
“The situation is more complicated because due to COVID-19, money was given to expand services, health workers were hired, modular services were created for care; But currently these contracted health workers have already been fired, many of these implemented modular hospitals have been decommissioned and pre-pandemic normalcy has returned, which was never good”, Ensures.
According to CMP data, about 70% will not be served in 2020 and 50% in 2022.
impact of political crisis
According to Mayta-Tristan, it is difficult to achieve change and reform in the health system in a state of constant crisis.
“Changes are long-term and one of the main issues to be able to make them is to get out of a crisis in which it is not known how long it will be. There are no minimum agreements for the agenda and if we had a frequent change of ministers then it is impossible to reach a development agenda of change because we cannot move forward”. confirm.
According to the research director of Universidad Santífica del Sur, although there should be more stability in regional governments, the corruption they have been involved in has also been detrimental.
“We see more than 100 control reports for corruption. We have a problem with who is in charge and who appoints this person. Honestly, with Peru Libre in charge of health, the characteristics of officials began to decline a lot ”, Number,
