Archive for the ‘Health Care’ Category
Thursday, January 31st, 2008
Peruvian doctors ended their national strike Tuesday following a 15-point agreement with Health Minister Hernán Garrido-Lecca. The president of the Peruvian Medical Federation, Julio Vargas, told daily La República that members of the doctors’ union unanimously voted to end the 21-day strike ahead of a meeting with Garrido-Lecca.
According to the daily, the agreement will amalgamate the different organs of Peru’s health sector under one system. The new system will reportedly include the health ministry, the health system for Peru’s military and police and Essalud, the public health insurance service. La Fuente added that doctors’ wages in the health ministry system will also improve.
The agreement follows tensions in the conflict which peaked on Monday. Doctors threatened to prematurely release patients from public hospitals in order to intensify their strike and increase pressure on the government. Garrido-Lecca responded by calling the plan an illegal act and threatened to file criminal charges against the doctors if they followed through.
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Tuesday, January 29th, 2008
The Peruvian Medical Federation voted to postpone releasing patients prematurely from public hospitals as part of their ongoing national strike over health care investment and improved salaries. According to Radio Programs radio, the union’s president, Julio Vargas, said they would wait 48 hours in the hope of opening dialogue with Health Minister Hernán Garrido-Lecca in order to end the 20-day strike.
The announcement to release the patients without proper treatment received swift reaction from Garrido-Lecca, who threatened to file criminal charges against the striking doctors if they followed through with their plan.
“If doctors dare to do that, they are committing an illegal act. It is an offense, it is a criminal act and it will be penalized as such,” Agencia Andina reported Garrido-Lecca saying. The minister also said that patients would be transferred to army and police hospitals if they were released without proper treatment from Peru’s public hospitals.
About 13,000 doctors began the national strike on Jan. 8 demanding, among other things, improved salaries and working conditions.
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Monday, January 14th, 2008
Economist Alejandro Arrieta Herrera announced today that unnecessary cesarean sections in Peru’s private clinics have created a surcharge of $6.7 million annually. Arrieta, who is a fellow at the Institute for Health at Rutgers University, added that employers and independent users of private health insurance are compensating for the surcharge by paying overpriced premiums.
According to Agencia Andina, Arrieta said 50 percent of births in private clinics are cesarean. However the rate jumps to 70 percent when the women have private health insurance. The World Health Organization has reportedly said that no country should have a cesarean rate above 15 percent.
A cesarean can be a lifesaving operation for both mothers and baby’s when necessary, says the California-based International Cesarean Awareness Network, ICAN. However, they can also “double a woman’s rate of hysterectomy, blood transfusion, admission to intensive care, prolonged hospital stay and death, compared to mothers who delivered vaginally.” The ICAN adds that babies born by cesarean are 41 percent more likely to die than babies born vaginally.
According to Arrieta, Peru’s overuse of cesarean sections is due to a 1997 reform that created Health Provider Entities, EPS, which increased the financial incentives for clinics to use more expensive clinical and diagnostic procedures. “Unjustified cesareans have increased in order to compensate for the deterioration of medical funds caused by the reform” said Arrieta.
More than 13,000 women are annually subjected to preventable cesarean sections in Peru.
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Friday, December 21st, 2007
Peru’s former health minister said yesterday that preliminary information from international health organizations points to weak immune systems as the cause of death in four people who received yellow fever immunizations in the southern Peruvian town of Ica in early October.
Carlos Vallejos told Agencia Andina “there seemed to be a sensibility problem on the part of the host, the immune systems were extremely handicapped in some of them. This created the condition for the unfortunate results.”
An investigation into the cause of deaths is being carried out by the World Health Organization, the Pan-American Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They are scheduled to release the report in February 2008.
The Health Ministry planned on vaccinating 204,000 people in Ica, which was devastated by the magnitude-8 earthquake on Aug. 15. The vaccinations were donated by Brazil and put to use just before the October expiry date printed on the vial labels. A 73-year-old man and a 24-year-old mother of two were among the victims who suffered fatal bouts of fever and diarrhea after receiving the shots.
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Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
A report by the World Bank on the relationship between social services and poverty levels in Peru is scheduled to be published tomorrow. ¨Social Protection in Peru: How to Improve Results for the Poor?¨ is expected to argue that infant chronic malnutrition is the best indicator of the country’s poverty. It is also expected to argue that improving infant nutrition is key to lowering Peru’s overall poverty level.
The World Banks director of Human Development for Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela and a co-author of the report, Daniel Cotlear, sat down for an interview with daily La República on Saturday.
According to Cotlear, social exclusion is preventing many people from enjoying Peru’s strong economic growth. ¨What should be the main concern is inclusive growth where those who are poor today, and their children, participate through health and education.¨ (more…)
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Thursday, November 29th, 2007
A report presented by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) on Wednesday shows a strong correlation between health conditions and poverty in Peru. Twenty percent of the poorest population, for instance, bears 50 percent of deaths from nutritional deficiencies and anemia.
The 2007 edition of Health in the Americas is two volumes, with one dedicated to 46 country reports and the other an analysis of hemispheric health conditions from a social and economic perspective.
In Peru ¨nearly all welfare indicators show that rural areas, indigenous populations, females, the jungle region, and the central and southern highlands are at a disadvantage¨ says the country report. (more…)
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Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
The ¨Revive El Mantaro¨project has found high levels of toxins in the Mantaro river basin, an important water source in Peru’s central Andes. ¨Revive El Mantaro¨ - a campaign launched in July 2006 by civil society groups in six affected provinces – took soil and water samples at over 50 locations along a 105-mile stretch of the Mantaro basin.
The study found a cesspool of cyanide, lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, coliform from human waste and nitrates from agrochemicals.
According to the study, river contamination increased as they got closer to mines, including the Missouri-based Doe Run poly-metallic smelter in the city of La Oroya. In the Anticona river, for instance, lead concentrations are180 times higher than the baseline – established by taking samples at river sources where water is purest - and World Health Oganization reference levels. In the San Juan river, cyanide concentrations are up to 35 times higher than the baseline level. (more…)
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Sunday, October 14th, 2007
Peru’s health minister handed over a $100,000 compensation check to one of four patients infected last April with HIV during blood transfusions at the Daniel Alcide Carrón National Hospital in the port city of Callao. This is not the first time patients have been infected with HIV at a national hospital in Peru. In 2004, eight people - several of them newborns – contracted the virus during blood transfusions at Lima’s Prenatal Maternity National Institute. According to the Washington-based Pan American Health Organization, up to a quarter of the supply in Peru’s blood banks is not properly screened.
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