MEXICO CITY (apro) .- Civil organizations and members of the Cero Desabasto collective, made up of groups of patients with various ailments, warned about a crisis in the administration of medicines, which worsened during the last year in public health institutions after the arrival of the covid-19 pandemic.
The foregoing is expressed in 23 thousand complaints filed in the last two years before various human rights organizations, health subsystems and medical arbitration commissions, they pointed out.
According to a statement signed by 47 groups and non-governmental organizations, last year the number of prescriptions without filling for patients who do not suffer from coronavirus increased considerably, while between 2019 and 2020 consultations for any disease decreased 107%, which represents 45 million less.
And in the case of cancer visits, the number of prescriptions not filled was 131% less than the previous year.
With regard to the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), last year it issued 431 million prescriptions, of which 21 million were not filled in full or were denied in their entirety.
The organizations and the collective abounded that between 2019 and 2020 the effective or complete supply of prescriptions at the national level in the IMSS fell six percentage points, going from 98 to 92%, respectively, which is equivalent to an increase of 11 million prescriptions not supplied to beneficiaries.
They added that from the program Tu Receta es tu Vale, of the IMSS, eight out of 10 vouchers were not exchanged by patients in 2020, with a total of 2.3 million vouchers effectively supplied in the year, making clear the lack of institutional alternatives to the problem shortage.
In the case of the Ministry of Health, 25% of the prescriptions were not filled effectively in the first level care units in the country, which proves that the shortage of medicines in Mexico is a cross-cutting reality, which impacts with greater force to vulnerable groups and is at one of the most critical points in recent years.
In the pronouncement, the Cero Desabasto collective demanded respect for our legitimate needs for access to treatment, which are well documented in at least 23 thousand complaints filed in health subsystems, human rights commissions and medical arbitration commissions, but only a handful cases have been solved or, in the worst case scenario, paid post-mortem.
For people with various ailments, the attitude of the government of the Republic is incomprehensible when trying to distort the demands of thousands of patients that we require medical care, timely and quality.
They considered the current government’s humanitarian position to be contradictory, when it has left millions of people in distress in one of the worst humanitarian and health crises in history.
After requesting a dialogue with the government, the Cero Desabasto collective called for the design of a strategy to strengthen the National Health System, always putting patients’ health and access to medicines at the center, as well as stopping the disparagement and politicization complaints and legitimate demands from patient groups and their families.
It also demanded a permanent and transparent dialogue between the citizen and the authorities of all the health subsystems to address the problem of shortages, and considered it necessary to dispose as soon as possible of urgent and high-cost drugs whose lack affects health or puts health at risk. suffer complications to patients living with cancer, post-transplant autoimmune diseases and low prevalence diseases, among others.
Among the patient groups and social organizations are the Citizen Alliance for Health; Alzheimer Mexico; Cervical Cancer Association; Association of Health and Social Welfare of Women and their Family; Mexican Association of Cystic Fibrosis; Doctors and Researchers in the Fight Against Breast Cancer; Nosotrox; PODER-Project on Organization, Development, Education and Research, and Founding, Center for Analysis and Research, among others.
– .
