Only this Tuesday, after critical months of the dengue epidemic, the ruling party deigned to convene the Health Commission of the Buenos Aires Legislature to report on the epidemic that hit the City. The ruling party gave him so little interest that not even the Minister of Health, Fernán Quiroz, showed up, but rather lower-ranking officials. With a self-congratulatory report that is far from the reality suffered by the people of Buenos Aires and in the midst of state inaction throughout the summer, they denied the possibility of researchers and specialists participating.
Legislator Alejandrina Barry of the PTS in the Left Front began her intervention by demanding an upcoming meeting with specialists, infectious disease specialists and health workers and denounced “They only called this meeting on April 16 when we had historic peaks during the summer, while we have submitted requests from all the blocks for urgent reports and even projects to alleviate this epidemic in the middle of its peak and from the ruling party they were denied their parliamentary treatment.
Alejandrina made clear the importance that the Buenos Aires executive gives to this health crisis that devastated the city throughout the summer and that all specialists clarify that, even if it decreases, it will continue as a permanent problem: “The minister started talking about dengue a month ago, it has more to do with issues from Focus Group opinion polls or surveys than as a real problem of a health crisis situation in the population”.
“You may have seen it on television, people attacking the repellents because there were none; it looked like a scene from The Hunger Games. But during all this time they did not say a word, they blocked all the legislative projects and all this while Macri was on vacation.” she stated indignantly, in the same way as the majority of Buenos Aires residents.
Alejandrina explains very well why these images were given in a desperate search to obtain repellents, something that was and is permanently hidden. “because there was a shortage in supermarkets, while in our country 80% of the repellents produced are made by a single monopolistic company, Johnson and Johnson, and it is the one that regulates absolutely all prices. “So in the midst of the shortage you could find repellents at Mercado Libre for 26,000 pesos.” and the legislator added “Many of the neighbors from village 31 told me that at the beginning of the year they had to decide between eating or buying supplies for the kids and then they had to decide between eating or buying repellent. This reality that you did not live and do not live happened and happens in this city”.
Alejandrina added to demonstrate the priorities of this government: “How much of the budget they allocated to deliver repellents, they never answered our requests for reports and today they remain unanswered. But Macri does spend money to buy pepper gas to repress demonstrations, such as those of neighborhood assemblies or workers demanding their jobs. And that pepper gas or tear gas each costs 216,000 pesos. There is money, but not to prevent dengue but to repress social protest”.
With the same consideration of macrista priorities, Alejandrina denounced “Many health workers told me that they could not afford to be able to treat the thousands of neighbors who came to the public hospital in a timely manner. Along with this, they asked me not to say which hospitals they were from because they were afraid of being kicked out.”.
They call dengue the disease of poverty and of course, as Alejandrina denounces, it is expensive to prevent it and impossible to cure it. “You repeat Adorni’s little story about the vaccine, when the truth is that it is even approved by the World Health Organization. But the worst thing is that the two doses that you would have to take cost 160,000 pesos. Who can pay it, nobody. Meanwhile, the government comes up with little stories to be able to save the money needed for dengue patients and use that money to pay for police mega-operations against the demonstrations.”a new example of what the priorities of Jorge Macri’s government are in the midst of a health crisis that they tried and try to hide.
In closing, he once again insisted that they reliably answer all the questions sent in advance as legislative projects requesting reports. And he once again insisted on the necessary parliamentary treatment of all the projects of all the blocks to in principle determine the health emergency due to dengue in the territory of the City of Buenos Aires.
Here we share the entire session of the Health Commission of the Buenos Aires Legislature so that you can measure the vagueness, imprecision and lack of a plan by the City Government in the face of this epidemic that already is and will be part of one of the problems health workers that stalk the people of Buenos Aires.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
