[NOTE:
The neo-liberal policies of the government are responsible to a great
extent for the near-collapse of the health care system. The goal has been
to scrap the public system and replace it with a private system. It's working!
-DG]
The government social security system owes some 750 million dollars
in payments to the nation's public hospitals, a network that provides health
care for 15 million of the nation's poorest 38 million residents.
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
Tuesday, 4 October 1999
Colombian public health system nears collapse
By Jacques Thomet
BOGOTA -- Rampant corruption and widespread mismanagement have
pushed Colombia's national health care system dangerously close to total
collapse, dramatized by the announced closing of Bogota's largest public
hospital and its maternity ward.
The San Juan de Dios hospital, the city' largest hospital with 600 beds
and 3,000 employees, faces imminent closure because of a budget deficit
that has left the workers unpaid for months, hospital directors announced
recently.
"We owe two months worth of wages to our workers," Alvaro Gutierrez,
who manages the 400 year-old hospital, said Thursday. "We do not have money
to pay for medicine or food for the sick."
On Sunday, the daily El Tiempo reported that the government nixed plans
for a hospital ship to be anchored off the northern coast because of project
overbilling.
And in September several clinics that together offered 400 beds for
low-income patients announced that they would be closing due to a lack
of funds.
The government social security system owes some 750 million dollars
in payments to the nation's public hospitals, a network that provides health
care for 15 million of the nation's poorest 38 million residents.
The health care meltdown comes as Colombians try to survive a spike
in violence in the country's 35 year-old civil war that pits three Marxist
rebel groups against the government and right-wing paramilitaries.
In desperation, one hospital in the south-western city of Popayan --
which has been unable to pay its workers for five months -- urged patients
to bring any supplies and medicine they may need when they visit the hospital.
President Andres Pastrana blasted the "cancer of corruption" when reports
surfaced of ambulance bills for public clinic patients who were moved between
floors in the same building, and maternity ward delivery bills issued for
male patients.
Two former social security presidents are currently under investigation
after it was found that they spent some 72 million dollars on, among other
things, unecessary airplanes and luxury vehicles.
Some hospitals have resorted to bribing social security employees just
to get them to release their payments, as former worker Mercedes Agudelo
-- collaborating with authorities in exchange for a reduction in her five-year
prison sentence on corruption charges -- told officials recently.
But help may be on the way: on September 27 the International Monetary
Fund announced Colombia will receive 6.9 billion dollars in aid from multilateral
institutions as part of an IMF-supervised package.
A large portion of the funds will be allocated to providing "a social
safety net," IMF officials said, adding that Colombia agreed to expand
spending on social programs by 900 million dollars over the next three
years.
The expenditures are aimed at cushioning vulnerable sectors against
the effects of recession. The economic downturn has so far led to mass
layoffs and a decline in living standards.
However it is unclear how much of the money will go to the public health
system: stated spending priorities include emergency job creation, job
training, and assistance to families displaced by political unrest.
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