health

Hope for reforms fades

Time has run out on President Torrijos’ pledge to reform health care.

Vice President Rubén Arosemena blamed the failure on doctors’ rejection of the reform bill.

la prensa

broken promises:Plans to make sweeping changes to the health care system in the wake of the 2006 diethylene glycol scandal that left more than 100 people dead were never realized.1143359

Two years after the government broached the idea reforming the public health system, those appointed by President Martín Torrijos to direct the changes claim the proposal was a farce.

“I was a useful idiot,” said Xavier Sáenz-Llórens, who felt he was made to play a role in pacifying the government’s critics following the mass poisoning caused by medicine tainted with diethylene glycol. He added that the Torrijos administration’s failure to pursue the needed changes was “completely regrettable.”

As the deaths from the contaminated cough syrup mounted in November 2006,Torrijos announced a plan to overhaul the health care system as the country knew it. “It’s clear [...] that we have an inefficient public health system,” he said, and pledged to implement “profound reforms” to ensure that another tragedy of that magnitude would not be repeated.

That was then. Last month, Vice President Rubén Arosemena acknowledged that the current administration had no intention of following through with the reforms, but said the proposal had been stalled by indecision on the part of medical professionals. “It makes no sense to go ahead with this project without the consensus of the doctors,” he said, referring to the National Medical Commission’s early rejection of the changes for fear that it was an attempt to privatize the industry.

What he didn’t mention was that the reforms, including the proposal to unify the health care system, were well-received by the National Coalition for Development in October 2007.

Arosemena’s announcement fell like a bucket of cold water on Rosario Turner, who, as minister of the National Coalition’s Bureau of Health, had been given the charge of promoting the reform bill and was resolved to transform the system.

“It was the government’s responsibility to come to an agreement with the doctors,” said Jenny Vergara, a participant in discussions as a member of the College of Pharmacists, who explained that of the 90 points under negotiation, “doctors only had reser vations about four of them.”

According to Vergara, the government’s dance around the issue of health reform during the last 18 months amounts to nothing more than a smokescreen. Now, she says, all of that has been thrown over to focus on the May elections.

Last year, five of the people still being treated for ingesting the poisoned medicine died. The most recent victim, Adolfo Nieto, was 58 years old.

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