Anti-corruption body questions slow operation of hospitals in Honduras

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The National Anti-Corruption Council (CNA) this Monday questioned “the frugality” of the intervening board of the Strategic Investment of Honduras (Invest-H) to put into operation the mobile hospitals purchased in 2020 for US$47.5 million to fight the pandemic of Covid-19.

In a communiqué, the ANC pointed out that “15 months have passed since the disastrous hasty purchase of the ill-equipped mobile hospitals from Elmed Medical Systems.”

Of the seven mobile hospitals that arrived in the country between July and November last year, “only one has become operational as a covid ward at the Mario Catarino Rivas Hospital and the one in Tegucigalpa as a center for the treatment of other diseases unrelated to the pandemic,” it added.

The ANC pointed to the “miserable expenditure” of US$47.5 million in the purchase of the mobile hospitals in Turkey and “the thrift of the Board of Strategic Investment of Honduras (Invest-H) to make functional what was acquired from the people.”

The Anti-Corruption Unit is concerned about “how society has been bamboozled in the purchase of the mobile hospitals without the slightest shame.”

“We observe how those in charge suddenly stopped charging for the obviously futile efforts they were making to enable the mobile hospitals to provide an alternative to patients in the interior of the country. For people in the Honduran hinterland, often the only alternative is to go far away to the big cities, where the medical centers are overcrowded,” she pointed out.

MORE REQUESTS.

Marco Bográn and Alex Moraes, former director and former administrator of Invest-H, respectively, have been in prison since last April for two felonies of violation of the duties of public servants and two felonies of fraud to the detriment of the public administration.

The anti-corruption body called on Honduran authorities to “make more fiscal demands” against those “who ordered and authorized the purchase (of mobile hospitals), as well as for those who may have a responsibility in the looting of hospitals that has been reported in recent weeks.”

The agency also regretted that Honduras “continues to be a hostile terrain for the honest, but with paved roads for the corrupt, who laugh at our compatriots while they ask for their vote and get upset when they are accused of stealing from the poorest.”

The ANC added that Hondurans “have a great opportunity to start cleaning our soil of stateless people, but first we must be aware that it is our turn to act and unite, remembering November 28 (when the country holds general elections) and push all the corrupt to the edge of the cliff of their own impunity.”

The pandemic has left 6,631 dead and 247,728 infected in Honduras in 15 months, according to official figures.