“We are working with 30% of the plant that the hospital should have. youWe have three guards that are completely empty of doctors and the response of the Ministry of Health is that we cover with overtime to cover that demand instead of giving a basic response, which would be to improve our working and salary conditions”. The complaint is made Sandra Verta, pediatrician at the San Justo Children’s Hospital and the Garrahan Hospital.
In addition to the adjustment and emptying, from the State, the only response is to force workers to work overtime that “will be timely paid” to care for the more than 500 children who are cared for at the San Justo Children’s Hospital.
“The situation is critical in all sectors of the hospital as a result of working and salary conditions. Not only doctors, but also in nursing. To give you an idea, there is only one kinesiologist per day for the demand of the entire hospital. We have a hospitalization ward that has 70 beds, an intensive care unit with 12 beds, nephrology, neonatal intensive care, and the demand for on-call care with inpatients. There is a lack of extractors, radiologists. It is a demand from the entire hospital.” “Here the situation is so critical that we are on the way to closing the hospital. in the imminence because we do not have the human capacity to cover the demand” concludes the pediatrician.
The San Justo Children’s Hospital is municipal. The union that should defend the workers and organize the fight for wages and working conditions is the STMLN, headed by Daniel Troncoso, a friend of the mayor of La Matanza Fernando Espinoza, on whom the municipal Executive depends. During the pandemic, workers at the Children’s Hospital, along with other hospitals in the area, led major struggles. The response of the municipality, accompanied by the union, were the summaries of more than 25 workers.
“They want us to be afraid because they know that the food of our families depends on this work,” several workers denounced in the assembly. “Here in La Matanza, the adjustment is brutal because there is money but it is under-executed instead of investing in health. It is a clear political decision to adjust, as they already did at the Hospital Teresa Germani de Laferrere that the pediatric guard has been closed for more than two years,” explained Miguel Miranda, a nurse at the Hospital del Niño y PTS militant in the FITU.
“Since Thursday we are in a permanent assembly and carrying out a visibility campaign abroad so that it is understood that it is not only our problem but that the direct repercussion is on the users. It has a direct impact on the children of La Matanza, Ezeiza, Montegrande, and Canning who come to be treated at the hospital”, explains Sandra Verta.
On the morning of Wednesday, May 22, PTS councilor at FITU Natalia Hernández presented a draft ordinance carried out in conjunction with the workers that requires the declaration of a health emergency in the Municipality. It joins the project presented last year, which was thrown out by the Frente de todos y Juntos por Cambio, which demands the transfer of municipal health workers to a permanent plant with a salary equal to the family basket, supplies and tools for the infrastructure. .
“To give you an idea, last Tuesday the Posadas Hospital guard closed because the demand was 200% due to the fact that they could not respond.
In the Garrahan, in the hospitalization guard they have 90 patients, 350 hospitalized in the room”.
As shown by the different testimonies and the guards crowded with mothers and children waiting to be attended throughout the Province of Buenos Aires, the health crisis is general, but in municipalities such as La Matanza, the most populous municipality in the country and ruling for 40 years by Peronism is in a critical situation.
As workers and professionals have been denouncing, for years public health has had many difficulties in meeting the demand required by patients. The de-financing of the area by Governor Axel Kicillof, whose adjustment has deepened since the agreement with the IMF that the Frente de Todos government agreed to with the endorsement of the right-wing opposition, has repercussions on the health of the vast majority. With a population of almost nineteen million people who are poor, the demand for public care has increased.
An emergency budget is necessary to meet the demand and an urgent salary recomposition for all personnel, in the face of the enormous deterioration in salaries due to growing inflation.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
