Health workers went on hunger strike on Tuesday in front of the Peruvian Ministry of Labor in the capital Lima. About a dozen doctors from the national social security union have taken part in protests there as the healthcare system struggles to cope with a second wave of Covid-19.
“We have started a hunger strike,” said Teodoro Quinones, a doctor involved in the protest, according to Reuters.
Quinones said the strike would last until Peru’s Labor Minister fires the country’s head of Social Security Fiorella Molinelli, who oversees the government’s efforts to establish temporary health and isolation centers for Covid-19 patients. .
As of Thursday, Molinelli has not commented on the union’s demands.
Protesters have harshly criticized the government’s approach to the pandemic and are calling for more investment in the healthcare sector.
“Our ICUs are collapsing and we are not receiving any response and we see the indifference of a government that allocates the budget to us,” Peruvian nurse Ketty Solier told Reuters on Tuesday.
“We urgently need to acquire this equipment to prevent the death of more Peruvians. The Peruvian state has a constitutional obligation to ensure accessibility to health services and right now they are denying access to hospitals because we no longer have the capacity to provide patients what they need a lot, ”he added.
“People are infected, there are no ICU beds, soon there will be no more hospitalization. Again we will see people dying on the street. As for the vaccine, we have no hope for the vaccine, we don’t know when it will arrive Ronald Castañeda, a relative of a Covid-19 patient, told Reuters.
UCI employment rates are 90% in some parts of Peru, according to the director of the Pan American Health Organization, Carissa Etienne, who described health systems with problems at a virtual press conference on Tuesday. throughout Latin America.
“Let’s start with a second wave [of Covid-19 cases]. This wave increases. I can tell you that we have made some calculations and that we are more or less right if we were in mid-April and the figures continue to grow, “Health Minister Pilar Mazzetti told local media on Monday.
On Tuesday, Peru’s interim president Francisco Sagasti approved a decree to fund the creation of more than 16 temporary isolation centers across the country and hire additional staff to expand health services, according to a Tuesday press release of the Ministry of Health.
Sagasti became president in November 2020, becoming the third president to be sworn in in just over a week as the country struggles with political turmoil amid the pandemic.