A publication from the digital medium Salud con Lupa indicates that Nayib Bukele’s government has hired a specialist to write an article published in a prestigious British magazine last December.
An investigation into the digital medium Health with magnifying glass It has pointed out that the Salvadoran government was using money from the El Salvador hospital to fund international publications on the management of the Covid-19 pandemic in the prestigious British magazine The Lancet.
“Hospital El Salvador: A New Paradigm of Intensive Care in Response to Covid-19 in Central America” was the headline published on December 23, 2020 by The Lancet, the same Bukele bragging about on his social networks, noting that the hospital , known as “the greatest in Latin America,” appeared in one of the world’s most prestigious magazines, but without mentioning that the publication was paid for.
The article cites the technology acquired to implement telemedicine in the care of patients with Covid-19, in addition to revealing some data, which, according to Salud con Lupa, has been treated inconsistently in official communication.
The medium points out that Bukele’s government has hired specialist Magdalena Serpa to help with the writing, and also stresses that the writing has been published in the Lancet’s opinion section.
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Salud con Lupa consulted the British media about this publication. Media Relations Officer Emily Head said that “this comment was submitted by the authors and not on behalf of The Lancet Global Health.”
He added, “This comment was not peer-reviewed externally, as is common in the Lancet journal comments.”
Salud con Lupa also emphasizes that two months before the publication of The Lancet, the director of the El Salvador hospital, Dr. Laura Miranda, had issued a reasonable resolution to justify the hospital’s first external recruitment, which was intended for a “Consultancy technique for descriptive writing of articles on the management of Covid-19 in El Salvador”, requested by Dr. Manuel Bello, responsible for the hospital’s Intensive and Intermediate Care Department.
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The purchase order was issued on October 28, 2020 and has a contract end date on December 31 in an amount of $ 12,600 in favor of foreign advisor Magdalena Serpa. The paper also includes the writing and publishing of five international articles.
Dr. Manuel Bello told Salud con Lupa that he did not know if the other four articles had already been written and delivered.