The ex-Minister of Health, Fernando Ruiz, described the complaint recently made by the head of said portfolio, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, as a desperate measure, about alleged deals that the previous administration did with the installation of Intensive Care Units to care for affected patients. by the coronavirus.
According to statements by Jaramillo: “Here they set up a business with the Covid-19 and tripled the beds in intensive care units, there was one of the big businesses and nobody said anything, in our department they opened intensive care units as if they had opened any type of drugstore.
Faced with this, Ruiz, who, being at the head of the portfolio, was in charge of coordinating policies in the country against the pandemic, shared with EL NUEVO SIGLO that these statements are unfortunate, but also a desperate action to try to justify a troubled healthcare reform.
THE NEW CENTURY: What is your response to the statements by Minister Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo about alleged deals that were made with the ICUs due to the pandemic?
FERNANDO RUIZ: He does not show any evidence to prove his claim. It seems very delicate to me and I see that it is an unfortunate generalization because, if Colombia manifested anything during the pandemic, it was the effort of doctors, nurses and hospital institutions in the country to attend to the emergency. There were even medical personnel who were infected or died from this disease while caring for patients. So, talking about this being a business or that it became a business is a pretty absurd generalization.
ENS: What is your response to the Minister’s statements about the installation of ICUs without having trained personnel?
FR: The answer to this is given by the Colombian Association of Critical Medicine in a statement in which they report that more than 2 thousand people were trained. In addition to that, care protocols were drawn up because it was an emergency situation. No one has 3,000, 2,000 or 100 intensive care workers sitting around waiting for a pandemic.
For this reason, there necessarily had to be an adaptation and cardiologists, infectologists, internists, and anesthesiologists participated there, who were adequately trained by the intensive care physicians themselves. We also had well-developed care protocols. There was a very broad exercise of work with a scientific basis.
ENS: To what do you attribute the fact that the issue of the Covid-19 pandemic came up in a debate on health reform, when it was not supposed to be part of the agenda?
FR: I think it is a desperate search to set the scene for a reform that has no consensus. And the best way to do it is by denigrating the current health system that responded effectively and benefited thousands of Colombians affected by this disease.
There is an incessant search to generate this type of narrative and, in the end, it is an eminently political issue that is highly questionable in my opinion. The reform is processed in haste and has a number of outbursts. I believe that the National Government has desperately sought to create an environment, based on a defamatory criticism on the subject of health.
ENS: The World Health Organization raised the global health emergency due to the pandemic. What lessons can be learned about how it was dealt with, especially since there are those in Congress who say that Colombia is among the top countries with the highest number of deaths? ?
FR: I would tell these gentlemen from Congress to be responsible. If you look at the global statistics of Colombia in terms of mortality, our country was ranked number 34. Colombia has been characterized by a much more transparent management of information. It is about other types of narratives that try to find ears in the population, but I believe that, fortunately, the same population has very deep knowledge, since they were able to live and have the experience of the management that was carried out.
ENS: Once the pandemic ended, where was the equipment used to attend to the emergency?
FR: The equipment was delivered directly to public hospitals and to private hospitals through a loan. It was a decision of the Ministry of Health, since at this time the global alert was eliminated and the destination of said equipment was defined. These devices have been very useful for the care of the population that enters hospitals for diseases other than Covid-19. They still require them.
In many hospitals a very interesting situation has arisen and that is that having access to the intensive care facility has allowed them to raise the level of care for more complex patients.
There is also a network made up of more than 200 laboratories with the capacity to carry out PCR tests that will be used for other diseases. I believe that in the end, the pandemic meant a great effort and has left us with capacities that optimize the health system for Colombians.
ENS: What do you think will be the scope of the first three articles of the approved health reform?
FR: There are three articles that do not have the greatest debate. It was one of the bumpier bills we get handed out. I am very afraid of what could come out of here, because I believe that a project with this type of procedure can really do a lot of damage to the population.
ENS: Political analysts argued that Minister Corcho left, whom they considered intransigent, and Jaramillo entered, there would be concertation. Do you see in this change the possibility of some consensus?
FR: I believe that Minister Jaramillo is a more political person and with a greater capacity for dialogue than we had during the past 9 months. We hope there will be further discussion and debate on the reform. I am not so optimistic because we see that there is a government that seeks, above any consideration, to bring about this health reform and that will surely have consequences.
ENS: Do you think that while the thicker issues of the project, such as the EPS, remain to be discussed, there will be the possibility of a debate that is more technical than political, given that the government has been recruiting congressmen to support the project?
FR: I find it difficult when I look at the gigantic effort that the Government has made to schedule congressmen and convince political parties to negotiate above the population. This is very important and I hope they maintain a critical vision of the well-being of the population.