Given the growing problem in deliveries, the health authorities announced a new distribution scheme: lease more than 100 trucks of up to 3.5 tons to deliver inputs in clinics and health centers of the 23 states where the IMSS welfare operates.
Despite government efforts, experts doubt this new plan because it remains at the head of the Birmex parastatal project, which has not given effective results in the organization of public purchases and in distribution.
“This entity lacks the capacities to ensure a system of purchases, storage, distribution and timely delivery of the medicines and supplies that are complete, effective and transparent,” says Janet Oropeza, a researcher of Fundar, in the analysis in the analysis I stumbled again and with the same stone: the case of the purchase of medicines and Birmex .
The irregular supply of medicines has unleashed protests from patients, doctors and nurses. Last week thousands of health workers of the State of Mexico demonstrated. The ancestor, staff of 52 hospitals in Puebla. In early July, residents of Acapulco, Guerrero, blocked the sun highway in drug demand.
Complaints have been replicated in hospitals in Oaxaca, Chihuahua, Baja California and Veracruz. All fear that the shortage will get worse as much as in the pandemic, if the government does not improve the distribution.
“We do not want the horror stories of other years to be repeated,” says Maritza Herrera, mother of a 3 -year -old child of leukemia. She manifested himself on June 5 outside the Children’s Hospital of Veracruz, along with other mothers, after the suspension of her children’s chemotherapies due to the lack of inputs.
Veracruz is one of the 10 states with the most requests for non -compliance. The list is headed by Mexico City, State of Mexico and Chiapas. Then, Veracruz, Quintana Roo, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Guanajuato, Puebla and Campeche.
The claims have reached President Claudia Sheinbaum, who in an event in Ixtapaluca, State of Mexico, was received with the protest of health workers.
“There is no material, there are no inputs, there is no basic material to serve patients,” said one of the nurses who manifested that June 6.
Breaches and delays
The health institutions began to issue the orders of supply of medicines since February and, to date, several have not been supplied in the established deadlines.
Only in June and what is going on July, the suppliers breached 10% of the orders or distributed an amount of pieces less than that requested by the hospitals. This represents a total of 59.3 million inputs that were not delivered on time or simply did not arrive.
During that period, the ISSSTE has been the institution with the most breached orders, followed by IMSS and IMSS Welfare, according to the data of the drug delivery platform.
In breeding orders there are products of all kinds. For example, the ISSSTE requested 867,000 pieces of diapers for Mexico City on June 11. The delivery date was fulfilled on July 2 and the Orthopedics company Ana did not deliver any piece.
The registration of the Ministry of Health accumulates similar cases. On June 12, the IMSS ordered 250,000 containers with 30 metformin tablets for diabetes in Jalisco. The IARE supplier of the West did not deliver any.
The 94,000 oral electrolyte containers that the IMSS welfare from the Protein company did not arrive at Hospitals in Guerrero. Nor were 67,000 pieces of the Citalopram antidepressant, of the Psychopharma laboratory be delivered to Chihuahua.
Thousands of gloves, covers and folic acid pieces were not delivered in Sinaloa and Oaxaca. Nationally, different suppliers breached with the delivery of almost 9,300 cisplatin containers, a solution for chemotherapies.
Gilberto Castañeda, researcher at the Department of Pharmacology at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies (Cinvestav), explains that distribution problems do contribute to the shortage of medicines and affect the right to health.
“We are seeing a generalized discontent throughout the health sector because of this shortage of medicines, which has been running too long and does not correct,” he says.
