Health workers began their hunger strike for the Peruvian Ministry of Labor in the capital Lima on Tuesday. About a dozen medics from the National Social Security Union have participated in protests there as the health system grapples with a second wave of Covid-19.
“We have started a hunger strike,” said Teodoro Quinones, a doctor who is participating in the protest, said Reuters.
Quinones said the strike would last until Peruvian Labor Minister removes the country’s head of health and social security, Fiorella Molinelli, who oversees the government’s efforts to set up temporary health and isolation centers for Covid-19 patients.
Molinelli did not comment on the union’s demands on Thursday.
The protesters have sharply criticized the government’s handling of the pandemic and are calling for more investment in the health sector.
“Our ICUs are collapsing and we are not getting a response and we are seeing the indifference of a government allocating us the budget,” Peruvian nurse Ketty Solier told Reuters on Tuesday.
“We urgently need to purchase this equipment to prevent more Peruvians from perishing. The Peruvian state has a constitutional obligation to guarantee access to health services and at the moment they are denying access to hospitals because we no longer have the capacity to provide patients of what they need so much, ‘she added.
“People are infected, there are no IC beds, there will be no more hospitalization soon. We are going to see people die on the street again. We have no hope about the vaccine, we don’t know when it will arrive.” Ronald Castañeda, a relative of a Covid-19 patient, told Reuters.
The ICU occupancy rate is 90% in some parts of Peru, according to Pan American Health Organization director Carissa Etienne, who described struggling health systems across Latin America at a virtual press conference Tuesday.
“We are starting a second wave [of Covid-19 cases]. This wave is rising. I can tell you that we made some calculations and we are more or less right where we were in mid-April, and the numbers are continuing to rise, ”Health Minister Pilar Mazzetti told local media on Monday.
On Tuesday, Peru’s interim president Francisco Sagasti approved a decree to fund the creation of more than 16 temporary isolation centers across the country and to hire additional staff to expand health services, according to a Tuesday press release from the ministry. of Health.
Sagasti became president in November 2020, becoming the third president to be sworn in in just over a week as the country grappled with political turmoil during the pandemic.