Tegucigalpa, Honduras
The covid-19 pandemic in Honduras continues to record upward data without operating six of the seven mobile hospitals purchased in Turkey between March and April for a cost of $ 47.5 million.
After the first two cases of covid-19 were confirmed, the state-owned company Inversiones Estratégicas de Honduras (Invest-H) made an “emergency purchase”, without a public tender, of seven mobile hospitals between March and April 2020. , with the first two expected to become operational in July.
But of these structures, arriving until July, only one is active, in San Pedro Sula, the country’s second-most important city, where a high incidence of cases of the fatal disease is recorded.
According to complaints from, among others, the National Anticorruption Council (CNA) and the Association for a More Just Society (ASJ), there was talk of corruption in the purchase of the seven mobile hospitals.
In addition, in the first two hospitals, which stayed for several weeks at the National Port Company, in Puerto Cortés, some devices and equipment were found to have been used or expired, so the prosecution launched an investigation that is ongoing.
Of the other five hospitals, two arrived in October and the last three in November 2020, but none are working, and regarding Tegucigalpa, of the two arriving in July, one was delivered by the intermediate council until this Monday. from Invest-H to the Ministry of Health.
According to Gustavo Boquín, one of Invest-H’s accountants, the five mobile hospitals that will operate in the south, east, west and Caribbean regions of the country will start in late February, almost a year after they were purchased. .
Several sources jointly point out that the irregular procurement of mobile hospitals is another example of the corruption that continues to rage in Honduras. EFE