Home » World » Between hate campaigns and guilty searches

Between hate campaigns and guilty searches

Something strange happened last Friday night when the Undersecretary of Health Prevention, Hugo López-Gatell began his usual message with a gesture of concern and ended by pointing out to governments that reopened their economies without care, to immediately show a regrowth of cases in the Yucatan Peninsula.

That same night he had met with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the IMSS director general, Zoé Robledo, the secretary of Health, Jorge Alcocer and the director general of the National Institute of Health for Well-being, Juan Antonio Ferrer, to review the status of the response to the epidemic.

Before them he presented a general panorama, already down according to his words, and with less intensity. With 23 declining states and only nine with an increase.

On Sunday, even President Andrés Manuel López Obrador used these data to call for calm, “in the measure of the circumstances”, to give “the assurance that we are going forward, we are dealing well, in a professional manner.”

However, before the media, that Friday López-Gatell arrived with a different tone. It first blamed states and municipalities for the accelerated reopening, as well as problems in data collection, for the delay in test results. Then he exhibited the regrowth in Yucatan and Quintana Roo, to end with the affirmation that we only have half of the reality due to the inconsistency of data from some states, with which it was decided to suspend the presentation of the corresponding covid traffic light.

Hours earlier, WHO Executive Director for Health Emergencies, Mike Ryan, had warned of rush to reopen, especially in Mexico, and noted the weak epidemiological surveillance system.

Thus, the intervention of the undersecretary was oriented rather to justify his action, but those indicated did not remain silent. On Saturday, the National Action Governors Association protested the allegations. They even demanded explanations, not from López-Gatell, but from the head of the Ministry of Health.

López-Gatell is the lightning rod of the government government. Not even the secretary of Health, but the undersecretary of Prevention will be the fuse to whom they charge the results of the team that behind him recommends, analyzes, proposes.

How far is he solely responsible? What about the Secretary of Health, the President, the opposition, the food industry and advertising, the previous health authorities that allowed the obesity epidemic to advance without stopping it, those who profited by building hospitals that never worked, the that broke the health system and diverted resources for political campaigns?

Searching for a scapegoat is the easiest thing. Understanding the multiple factors that come together to make Mexico one of the hardest hit countries is much more difficult, it requires an understanding of social and economic processes that escapes the common place, the quick exit.

Reality is never simple.

[email protected]
Twitter: @hzamarron

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.