President Alberto Fernández expressed this Friday his “eternal gratitude” to the health personnel who fought the Covid-19 pandemic, during an act of tribute to professionals in the sector on the three-year anniversary of the confirmation of the first case of coronavirus in the country.
He said this at the closing of the national meeting “One country, one response”, which was held at the Kirchner Cultural Center (CCK), where all the country’s teams that worked to care for the population and to mitigate the impact were honored. of the pandemic.
“With the pandemic we all get involved, but for the health personnel I will only keep an eternal gratitude. In therapy, the doctors, nurses and kinesiologists were exposing their lives. We are indebted to you and it is the least we can do. For a President, it is difficult to talk about this time that we have lived through,” said Fernández when speaking in the CCK’s Ballena Azul space.
In an act that he shared with the Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti, the president He recalled that in February 2020 he was in Europe with several personalities and “a European leader asked me about the virus, because there was very little information.”
“He warned me that the virus could have very serious consequences, damage to the economy. That leader was (the then German Chancellor) Ángela Merkel, at a dinner we had. When I arrived in Buenos Aires, I spoke with (former Health Minister) Ginés (González García) and told me that we had to be vigilant,” recalled Fernández.
“Two weeks after coming from Europe, the pandemic was merciless,” he recalled. “In Spain, in Italy, they did not know how to control the cases and tremendous images were seen.”
“I spoke with (Giuseppe) Conte, the then Prime Minister of Italy, with Pedro Sánchez (president of the Spanish Government); and they did not understand how to calm that down. ‘We do not have a remedy’, they told me. They proposed to isolate themselves to avoid having contact ” , pointed out the head of state.
“Then (the virus) arrived in Argentina and I asked them to set up a medical team to see what it was about,” said the head of state.
In this sense, Fernández added that it was done “with great doctors who did it selflessly and none of them charged a penny for assisting me.”
Fernández outlined that He came to the Government “without a Ministry (of Health), with an abandoned hospital system, in a country where measles had returned, and hospitals were not being built.”
90% of the vaccines went to 10% of the population in the center of the world and 90% of us were elbowing each other looking for vaccines”Alberto Fernandez
“Argentina was a producer and supplier of respirators to a Cordovan company that sold them abroad,” he recalled.
The head of state said that he made the decision in those days to “prohibit this export to buy them and thus it was possible to provide 4,000 beds with automatic respirators to the country’s care centers.”
“In addition, we built more than 30 modular hospitals, with more therapy beds and better care for our people,” he summarized.
Fernández also referred to the need to produce “food so that it reaches deprived neighborhoods” and in this sense he distinguished the Armed Forces, which “worked like never before and reached all corners” of the country.
“Each one did what they had to do and more. I toured humble neighborhoods, dining rooms and picnic areas in their precarious houses and I saw the solidarity of those who have less,” the President contributed.
He also discovered “the injustice of the world, the inequality, where 10 people have the same heritage as 40% of humanity, where 90% of the vaccines went to 10% of the population in the center of the world and 90% were elbowing each other looking for vaccines”.
“I thought that we would all come out better, because we saw death walk among us, many loved ones fall, and I prefer a phrase from the goalkeeper Willy Caballero, who saved many years in the United Kingdom and who said that ‘the good ones will come out great and the bad, very bad’, and he was right. The challenge of having a more egalitarian society is still pending,” he concluded.
Fernández described this meeting as “difficult” because “it goes back to painful times.”
“I wish what we went through in a pandemic to no ruler in the world, because it was walking on a swamp, where you don’t know where you step on and where you sink. 130,000 Argentines remained on the road but 10 million were treated, who were cured in the public health,” he said.
“Here no one is saved alone, we are survivors of a tragedy, the pandemic. We put our chests so that no more lives are taken. It is time to remember what happened to us,” Fernández stressed.
Word of the Minister of Health
For his part, Vizzotti began his speech with emotion and pointed out that “these are the most challenging words in my life” and described as “a very important day today” when “three years have passed since the first case in Argentina”.
The minister stated that “the President remarked that it was important to meet to reflect on what happened to us as a society, as a country”, and this day arose “A country, a response, in which today personnel from the Armed Forces were at four tables Armed Forces, Aerolíneas Argentinas, security forces, ministers”.
Then addressing the president, Vizzotti stated: “There was nothing that you said no to us, you asked us what is needed, to have vaccines to see how we saved the greatest number of lives possible. In you to all I thank the entire cabinet.”
He recalled the creation of “protocols” such as “at the entry points to Argentina” and affirmed that the Government “responded to the pandemic”, in addition to also highlighting the task of “provincial health ministers” in “a tragedy that It went through all of us.”
“We went through very difficult situations,” said the head of the Health portfolio, and highlighted the work “from intensive therapy to Detection personnel, swabbing, including nurses, kinesiologists, radiologists, maintenance, cleaning and kitchen personnel, administrative staff, stretcher-bearers , drivers, health agents “.
He recalled that “the situation could be alleviated” “with the arrival of the vaccine”, in “the most important vaccination campaign in our history”, and stressed “production and industry”, which “increased three times the supply of oxygen “.
Vizzotti emphasized that “The arrival of respirators was a political decision of the national State” and stressed that “they were distributed equitably, the same with the vaccine, the same with oxygen.”
On March 3, 2020, “it was a before and after” and he emphasized that “society took care of itself, was vaccinated, and this response could be achieved.”
“There were many left on the road, we lost health personnel and non-health personnel,” said the minister, and valued in the pandemic having valued “what we are capable of doing.”
He emphasized the idea of having “health at the center of the agenda and that it continues to be a priority, more accessible, of better quality, more equitable”. “We did it together and put it into healthy words”, concluded Vizzotti.
At the event, the actress Virginia Innocenti and the musician Antonio Birabent read their stories, and a video was shown with the song La Cigarra, by María Elena Walsh, with the participation of different singers, which continued live with the voice of Julia Zenko and piano by Lito Vitale.
