“We are all Hugo”, says AMLO before the criminal complaint against López-Gatell

Roberto Garduno and Fabiola Martinez

Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, February 9, 2022, p. eleven

The use of ivermectin in patients with covid-19, promoted by the government of Mexico City, and the ratification of the criminal complaint against the undersecretary of health, Hugo López-Gatell, for the death of two infected people, are part of a whole campaign of attacks on the government by the conservative bloc and its spokesmenPresident Andrés Manuel López Obrador assured.

For his part, Hugo López-Gatell argued that, based on the covid treatment guide, made up of 180 technical documents, since September 2021 in the Ministry of Health we recommend not using ivermectin, because there was a body of evidence indicating that it should not be used.

In the president’s morning conference, the Undersecretary of Health reiterated that the medicine stopped being delivered in the country’s capital, where it would not have happened experiment some with this drug, which has virtues to deal with various ailments and is considerably less toxic.

López Obrador defended his health care strategy in the emergency: “it is in the public domain, as is obvious, there is a whole campaign of attacks on the government by the conservative bloc and its spokesmen because they make a scandal of everything, to the degree of file a criminal complaint against Dr. López-Gatell for the unfortunate deaths of covid. It is disproportionate, it is very irrational and it carries a lot of hate. We have done everything to save lives.

“We are among the 10 countries with the most vaccines applied, acquired. We were one of the first countries to report almost daily, this man – in reference to López Gatell – about the pandemic. A great injustice is being done to me, a smear campaign, because what is the Public Ministry or the judge going to do? And it is not just Dr. Hugo, he is the President, he is the Secretary of Health. We would all go to jail, we are all Hugo. But it all has to do with politics.”

López-Gatell spoke about ivermectin and its effects. In the version of the covid treatment guide, from August 2021, “it was the first where we explicitly recommend not using ivermectin because at that time there was already a significant body of scientific evidence worldwide, which allowed identifying that there were no samples useful enough.

He added: it is important not to confuse, not to think that there was an experiment, there is no such experiment. Ivermectin is a drug that was originally designed as an antiparasitic drug. It has more than 50 years of existence, it has been used in extensive public health campaigns in the world.