With no vaccines or basic drugs to combat COVID-19, Paraguay’s main public hospitals collapsed on Wednesday, leaving them without the capacity to receive patients in intensive care units.
In a statement, the Health Ministry reported that all surgical procedures in public hospitals across the country have been indefinitely suspended to allocate resources for the fight against the pandemic.
Although the new coronavirus has so far claimed the lives of 3,218 people, a number much lower than that of its neighbors in the region, Paraguay is out of basic supplies and medicines.
“We don’t have X-ray films, nasogastric tubes, there are no basic drugs … We are no longer keeping our mouths shut. We are saying enough to the government,” said pulmonologist Carlos Morínigo, chief of respiratory disease at the National Institute of Respiratory and Environmental. Diseases (Ineram), the best-equipped institute in Asunción.
Morínigo and about twenty doctors and nurses demonstrated in front of the hospital and blocked the street at intervals. The medical staff were joined by relatives of ICU patients who shouted “We want supplies” and “Enough injustice.”
Morínigo admitted that the drugs are not available on the local market and that the lack of supplies adds that the population “lives in a relaxed situation, playing football and volleyball with friends, without distancing themselves from social areas or respecting the health protocol”.
The director of Ineram, Felipe González, told the radio stations in Asunción that he made his position available to the Ministry of Health “because there are no medicines and infected people are still arriving at the hospital”. He added that he has not yet received a response from the ministry.
Gladys Martínez, who has her mother in Ineram’s intensive care unit, told The Associated Press by phone that “I went to the pharmacy for atracurium and medazolam (a muscle relaxant and sedative) for a 24-hour treatment, but the budget is five. million guarantees (approximately $ 850). This is a disaster ”.
María Cristina González, who accompanies her husband who has been admitted to the same medical center since January 14, said that “I collected about 60 million guaranís ($ 9,000) among other relatives and friends to buy the drugs.
Meanwhile, President Mario Abdo Benítez posted a video to his Facebook account claiming that the country has achieved good results in the containment and treatment of COVID-19.
At a public event in the town of Caacupé, 55 kilometers east of Asunción, the president said that “if I get infected, I will enter Ineram because the best doctors are there.”
Two weeks ago, the Russian Investment Fund delivered to Paraguay 4,000 doses of a million acquired of the Sputnik V vaccine. According to Health Minister Julio Mazzoleni, the rest of the vaccines will arrive in the coming weeks, depending on the availability of the Russian laboratory.
Paraguay is simultaneously awaiting the arrival of three million vaccines through the COVAX system created by the United Nations and several international organizations to ensure equitable immunization for COVID-19.
Paraguay, with a population of 7.6 million, has so far registered 161,530 cases of the new coronavirus.