Poor health of the health system

Paying huge nursing home bills brings headaches and financial distress to the family, but all of this is worth it when the injured person is out of danger and confirmed to have received good medical care and a good prospect of full recovery. However, a question that must be addressed is: what should people do if they cannot raise the funds needed to build a high-level care center, even among several family members? How can Guatemalans who do not have health insurance and savings solve medical emergencies, given the high percentage of residents in this country? Why can’t we have a quality health system?

The country’s two major hospitals, San Juan de Dios Hospital and Roosevelt Hospital, remain in a permanent state of crisis, with no supplies, electricity and water services cut off, overcrowding, poor emergency care, poorly trained doctors, low salaries, and excessive exploitation. It is well known that a person can enter these hospitals with one disease and then contract multiple others, which in many cases has led to the death of patients admitted for non-serious reasons.

As for the regional hospitals, they are small and simple, often little more than waiting rooms where patients are stabilized before being transferred to hospitals in Guatemala City. Not to mention that areas far from the provincial capital often lack even the most basic emergency supplies. It is enough to remember the tragic case of the poet Humberto Ak’abal, who died while traveling on the country’s poor roads in an ambulance on his way from the hospital in his hometown of Totonicapán province to the capital. The city hospital was unable to successfully treat sepsis caused by intestinal surgery. It was an amplified version of a well-known story: a child died of an easily treatable gastrointestinal infection because his village did not even have a health center. The story is repeated in one detail or another across the country.

Regarding social security, IGSS is a strange entity and people are divided about its opinions. I know friends who talk about complex surgeries performed at the institution with great skill and excellent results, just as I know stories that are nothing short of horror, of forever waiting for appointments, callous treatment, poor practices in simple surgeries and cases that are easy to treat. A kind of lottery where if you are lucky you get a good price and if you are not you get nothing. In any case, the fact that the millionaire amounts owed to IGSS by both the state and private initiatives hardly guarantee the good functioning of this entity, not to mention the constant desire of successive governments to privatize it, which is guaranteed by leaving it adrift, starved of funds and with poor services.

(frasepzp1)

In short, it is no surprise that the public health situation in Guatemala is a mess, and the average Guatemalan is left on his own, without health insurance or the money necessary to pay for quality health care. He prays daily to God to protect him from an accident, attack, or unforeseen illness that would undoubtedly put him in as much financial trouble as his physical troubles. It has also been widely commented that for many so-called middle-class families, it only takes one accident or a serious illness like cancer to drop them down a notch or two financially. Given that upward mobility is so scarce and so slow in Guatemala, it goes without saying that it is easier to fall down the economic ladder than to achieve financial success, and the poor health of our health system is one of the barriers to prosperity for Guatemalans.

It is difficult to find an explanation for why the Guatemalan public health system is still in such a disastrous state. Apart from the greed of successive governments, it has been plundered along with the rest of the country and fell into a state of abandonment during the internal armed conflict. At that time, the counter-insurgency state was not very interested in anything that did not completely crush the internal enemy, and a good national health system did not play a very important role in this regard. There is also the fact that the health system is under-budgeted and negligent in addressing the necessary health issues in its process.

But there are also historical and structural reasons for the apathy of citizens. The fact is that many people die out of fear, and with good reason, because in the event of a health emergency, they may be sent to state hospitals, and faced with medical difficulties, they long to be able to receive treatment in private centers. However, there is little voice from citizens for better public health services, which should be one of the main demands of the entire population. Riding in a state ambulance to a public hospital to receive high-quality medical care, including surgical interventions, medicines, prostheses, physical therapy and all health-related paraphernalia should be a normal citizen expectation, not an illusion and an impossible dream.

The reforms attempted by the recently deceased Dr. Lucrecia Hernández Mack, who during her brief tenure as head of the Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance (MSPAS) during the little-known Jimmy Morales government, sought to improve primary care services in remote rural areas. It was a good first step, sadly cut short, but it must require that the national hospital be updated in terms of personnel, supplies, and equipment; that the level of care in regional hospitals be higher; that the IGSS receive its well-deserved millionaire fees, and, in short, that Guatemalan citizens can rest assured that a sudden illness or accident will not result in an almost certain death sentence, the financial ruin of the family, or both. . . things.