MEXICO CITY,- These are budget adjustments that were made to the amount approved for 2024 to the Health Secretary (Ssa), which went from 94 thousand 723 million 600 thousand pesos approved for use throughout this year to 74 thousand 799 million 900 thousand pesoss.
These resources should have been used to serve the population that does not have social security such as IMSS or ISSSTE. Of this total, the most affected programs were the subsidies for the states and municipalities, whose resources were reduced from 4 thousand 516 million to 1 thousand 922 million pesos; the program to strengthen state health services that went from 2 thousand 630.5 million to 229.2 million, and the vaccination program, which despite the increase in cases that is beginning to be registered, suffered a brutal cut of more than 9 thousand million pesos, going from 14 thousand 31.5 million to 5 thousand 99.5 million..
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This is not the first time that resources allocated to the health sector have not been used; in 2023, The Ministry of Health recorded an under-spending of more than 100 billion pesos.
According to the 2023 Public Account, for that year A total of 209 thousand 616.5 million pesos were approved for the Ministry of Health, but only 105 thousand 425.4 million were spent, which indicates an underspending of 49.7% equivalent to 104 thousand 191 million pesos, which according to what the law states, should have been returned to the Treasury of the Federation, without knowing the final destination of that money..
”Health spent 5.3% of the total expenditure of the administrative branches, with reductions of 49.7% with respect to the approved amount and 44.8% in real terms with respect to the amount spent the previous year. The evolution in relation to the approved budget is mainly explained by the transfer of resources from Insabi to IMSS-Bienestar, derived from the extinction of the former, due to the modifications to the General Health Law, published in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF) on May 29, 2023.“, justifies the public account.
According to the document Evolution of Health Spending, from the Center for Economic and Budgetary Research, there were 24 health programs that were under-spent in 2023, among which health care and free medicines stand out with 49 thousand 592.3 million pesos less; health care with 33 thousand 879.9 million less; and the vaccination program with 11 thousand 70.8 million pesos less.
Recently, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared that for the final stretch of his government he chose the health system as his priority, and announced the realization of a tour to evaluate how clinics and hospitals are functioning; he commented that he would be meeting with the governors of the 23 states that agreed to join the IMSS-Bienestar program to verify the progress in the matter.
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Even last Tuesday, July 30, López Obrador highlighted: “We are doing very well in the goal of improving the public health system, progress is being made”, but did not detail the cuts that have been recorded.
In this regard, Dr. Xavier Tello, a surgeon and health expert, stressed that the health results of this six-year term “are a disaster.”
”I can’t describe it, but I compare it to Berlin 1945 or Hiroshima 1945. People tell me I’m exaggerating, and I tell them, just to give an example, recently an acquaintance of mine suffered an accident, she had an exposed ankle fracture, and she arrived at the Magdalena de las Salinas hospital where 72 hours later absolutely nothing had happened. The desperation was not only hers, but also that of the doctors themselves, who could do nothing due to the lack of supplies and the huge crowd they had.“, he said.
The specialist warned that the same thing is replicated throughout the national territory, so he insisted that “We are experiencing the worst health disaster in the history of Mexico”.
He listed that during this government there was a shortage of medicines.because they centralized the purchase of everything”, qThey eliminated Seguro Popular, they invented IMSS-Bienestarthere was poor management of the pandemic, resources have been reduced, there was brutal underspending and it was decided to give money to the Cuban government: “And I could go on with small details, but broadly speaking this is what would explain the great crisis we have today in this six-year term.“, he accused.
2024-08-06 14:43:26