The General Health Council reserves the process report on health supplies

Angeles Cruz Martinez

Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, June 14, 2022, p. 13

The General Health Council (CSG) adopted the strategy of reserving information or declaring it non-existent regarding the processes already concluded for the incorporation or exclusion of products in the National Compendium of Health Supplies (CNIS, previously catalog and basic table). Responding to a request for information about a mammographer, he said that the process is ongoing and declared a two-year reserve.

In fact, said people close to the agency who filed complaints with the Internal Control Body (OIC) of the Ministry of Health for alleged corruption and conflicts of interest in the procedures, they want time to pass and the matter to be forgotten.

The inclusion of the computerized electrical impedance mammography of the Arachis Mexico company was approved by the Committee of Diagnostic Auxiliaries on March 4, 2022, according to official information from the CSG. Right there it was indicated that the publication of the CNIS update project would be done on May 24 last.

That didn’t happen maybe because of the OIC investigation. The alleged irregularity is that the evaluation of the mammographer should have been carried out in the Medical Equipment Committee, where most probably it would not have been approved by the specialiststhe interviewees pointed out.

The information disseminated at the time by the CSG, of which the day has a copy, indicates that the equipment was reviewed and approved with the folio number 0203-2022 and its price is 2.4 million pesos.

The request for information, which was submitted through the INAI, was to obtain the recorded public version of the virtual session of the committee of diagnostic assistants on March 4. The CSG replied that it is confidential material and, in this sense, it determined the reserve for two years and anticipated that after the information may be classified as confidential.

With an exhaustive legal argument –contained in 19 pages– he also said that the descriptive certificate of the input is being prepared, which was discussed in the same session and cannot be disseminated either.

Another case is that of five nutrition products, in respect of which alleged anomalies were also reported, including the delivery of money from the companies to CSG officials in exchange for their inclusion in the CNIS being approved (the day4/15/22).

The supplies, which correspond to food supplements and infant formulas, were evaluated and approved in November 2018 and until October 2021 they were included in the CNIS.

They were removed from the CNIS only four months later (on February 28), according to information from the CSG. In the response regarding the procedure, he offered two electronic addresses, which are disabled.

In addition, it declared the non-existence of information regarding the dates of the session where it was decided to exclude the products from the CNIS and the date of publication in the Official Journal of the Federation because, he said, they haven’t happened.