A digital publication Salud con Lupa indicates that the government of Nayib Bukele has hired a specialist to write an article published in December last year in a prestigious British magazine.
An investigation of the digital environment Health with a magnifying glass He pointed out that the Salvadoran government used funds from El Salvador Hospital to pay for international publications on the management of the Covid-19 pandemic in the prestigious British magazine The Lancet.
“El Salvador Hospital: 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 one with which Bukele boasted on his social media that the Hospital, known as “The largest in Latin America”, appeared in one of the most prestigious magazines in the world, but without mentioning that the publication was paid for.
The article mentions the technology acquired for the implementation of telemedicine in the care of patients with Covid-19, in addition to the disclosure of some data, about which Salud con Lupa points out that they were treated inconsistently in the official communication.
The media points out that the Bukele government has hired specialist Magdalena Serpa to help with the writing, and also points out that the writing was published in the opinion section of The Lancet.
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Salud con Lupa consulted the British press about this publication. Media Relations Officer Emily Head said that “this comment was submitted by the authors and was not commissioned by The Lancet Global Health.”
He added: “This comment was not evaluated by experts, as is usual in the comments of the Lancet.”
Salud con Lupa also points out that two months before the publication of The Lancet, the director of El Salvador Hospital, Dr. Laura Miranda, issued a reasonable resolution to justify the hospital’s first external engagement, which was intended for a “Consulting technique for the descriptive writing of articles on the management of Covid-19 in El Salvador”, which was requested by Dr. Manuel Bello, head of 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 completion date of December 31, for an amount of USD 12,600 in favor of the foreign consultant Magdalena Serpa. The document also includes the writing and publication 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.