With no vaccines or basic medicines to fight COVID-19, Paraguay’s main public hospitals collapsed on Wednesday and were left without the capacity to receive patients in intensive care units.
In a statement, the Ministry of Health reported that all surgeries in public hospitals across the country have been suspended indefinitely to allocate resources to fight the pandemic.
Although the new coronavirus has so far claimed the lives of 3,218 people, a much smaller number than its neighbors in the region, Paraguay has run out of basic supplies and medicines.
“We don’t have X-rays, nasogastric tubes, there are no basic medicines … We are not silent anymore. We say enough to the government, “said pulmonologist Carlos Morínigo, head of respiratory contingency at the National Institute of Respiratory and Environmental Diseases (Ineram), the best equipped in Asunción.
Morínigo and a number of doctors and nurses demonstrated in front of the hospital, intermittently blocking the street. The medical staff was joined by relatives of the patients admitted to intensive care who shouted “We want supplies” and “Enough injustice”.
Morínigo acknowledged that medicines are not available on the local market and that the lack of supplies adds that the population “lives in a relaxed situation, playing football and volleyball with friends, without social distancing or compliance with health protocol.”
Ineram director Felipe González told Asunción radio stations that he had made his position available to the Ministry of Health “because there are no medicines and infected people continue to arrive at the hospital”. He added that he had not yet received a response from the ministry.
Gladys Martínez, who has her mother in intensive care at Ineram, told the Associated Press by telephone that “I went to look at pharmacies for atracurium and medazolam (a muscle relaxant and a sedative) for 24 hours of treatment, but the budget is five million guarantees (about $ 850). This is a disaster. “
María Cristina González, who accompanied her husband who was hospitalized at the same medical center on January 14, said that “among other family members and friends, we raised about 60 million guarans ($ 9,000) to buy medicines.
Meanwhile, President Mario Abdo Benítez posted a video on his Facebook account claiming that the country had good results in containing and treating COVID-19.
At a public event in the city of Caacupé, 55 kilometers east of Asunción, the president said that “if I get infected, I will enter Ineram because the best doctors are there.”
Two weeks ago, the Russian Investment Fund delivered to Paraguay 4,000 doses out of a million purchased from the Sputnik V vaccine. According to Health Minister Julio Mazzoleni, the rest of the vaccines will arrive in the coming weeks depending on the availability of the Russian Laboratory.
In parallel, Paraguay is awaiting the arrival of three million vaccines through the COVAX system, created by the United Nations and several international organizations to ensure equitable immunization for COVID-19.
Paraguay, with a population of 7.6 million, has so far recorded 161,530 cases of new coronavirus.