Bolivia’s La Paz Declares Health Emergency as Blockades Cut Off Oxygen

BOLIVIA · NEWS

A month of road blockades demanding the president’s resignation has tipped Bolivia’s largest urban area into a medical crisis — and begun to fracture the government itself.

A 90-day emergency over medical oxygen

The regional government of La Paz declared a 90-day health and humanitarian emergency on June 2, after more than a month of road blockades left the Bolivian capital short of critical supplies. The measure is designed to prioritize the continuous supply of medical oxygen to hospitals and health centers, and to coordinate safe routes and humanitarian corridors for oxygen, food, fuel and medical inputs. Health authorities said hospitals would attend only emergency surgeries, with 50 to 60 scheduled operations postponed, and warned that some facilities had reserves for only one to five days. The director of one hospital told the Associated Press that recent efforts had replenished supplies, but only enough for two to three days.

The capital and the neighboring city of El Alto — home together to around two million people — have been partially cut off for more than 30 days. The shortages of food and fuel have spread to seven of Bolivia’s nine regions.

A human toll that is mounting

The crisis has begun to register in official figures. Bolivia’s national human-rights ombudsman recorded seven deaths linked to the conflict, most attributed to people unable to receive timely medical care because of the road closures, along with 23 injured and 321 detained. One patient at a public hospital in central La Paz described waiting almost a week for surgery and watching the queue shrink as others failed to reach the hospital through the blockades. Business groups estimate economic losses exceeding $2bn, compounding an economy already weakened by shortages of US dollars and falling domestic energy output.

Two ministers resign

The political fallout reached the cabinet on June 2, when the ministers of defense, Marcelo Salinas, and education, Beatriz García, both resigned. Neither ministry gave official reasons, though several outlets reported — citing unofficial sources — that the departures were linked to a refusal to sign a decree imposing a state of exception that could have put soldiers on the streets. Reuters reported that Ernesto Justiniano, a former counter-narcotics official, was named to replace Salinas. The resignations follow President Rodrigo Paz’s late-May announcement that he would reshuffle his cabinet in response to the protests, and add to a steady drain of officials from his government.

A standoff with no clear exit

The blockades, now on their 34th day, are led by the Bolivian Workers’ Center labor federation and peasant and social organizations, many aligned with former president Evo Morales, who demand that Paz resign and reverse austerity measures. The government, which accuses Morales-aligned sectors of fueling the conflict, has weighed a sector-specific state of exception to authorize the armed forces to clear more than 90 road blockades across eight regions, but has called it a “last option.” Mediation efforts involving the legislature, the Catholic Church and the human-rights ombudsman have failed, with protest leaders refusing to negotiate. Earlier attempts to open humanitarian corridors with police and military escorts ended in clashes. For now, the standoff continues — and with it, the strain on La Paz’s hospitals.