Paraguay’s Minister of Health resigns amid health system collapse due to Covid-19

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In full health system collapse due to the extremely rapid growth of Covid-19 infections and deaths, and faced with criticism and calls for his resignation, Paraguay’s Minister of Health stepped down on Friday, March 5th. Julio Mazzoleni was in full dispute with the opposition in the Senate, which had been urging him to step down.

“It is a moment where it is absolutely necessary for Paraguayans to be united to fight the pandemic and national interest comes before anyone else. I hope that this decision serves to unite the country,” said Mazzoleni when he announced his resignation from the government of President Mario Abdo Benítez.

Mazzoleni said that the decision was reached after a meeting with the president. “We have agreed together that I will leave the Ministry of Public Health so that the peace that is needed to face this challenge may be achieved,” he said in a statement to the state television.

The resignation was an abrupt turnaround with respect to what the official himself had said the day before. After the Senate called for him to resign in light of the health crisis caused by the shortage of medicines, particularly for Covid-19 patients, he said he respected legislators’ opinion but that he would not step down. “This is a very difficult moment that needs people who will contribute, rather than looking for culprits,” the still Minister argued at the time.

In an online press conference, Mazzoleni defended himself by saying that the Senate’s statement “ignores a global situation, a distorted, volatile market,” in relation to the shortage of supplies and the slow delivery of vaccines to the South American country. “With the same respect that I hold for Health officials, I also say that I am not going to accept this request from the Legislative.”

The Senate, with the endorsement of 30 of its 45 members, had approved hours earlier a resolution extending the resignation request to deputy minister Julio Rolón and to the general director of Surveillance, Guillermo Sequera, Mazzoleni’s two closest collaborators in the management of the pandemic. The debate in the Senate was prompted by protests staged by nurses and physicians in Asunción to demand the replacement of medicines used to treat severe Covid-19 patients.

Workers of the National Institute of Respiratory and Environmental Diseases, a standard reference in the campaign against the coronavirus, took to the streets on Wednesday along with patients’ relatives. In this respect, Mazzoleni emphasized that “it is a circumstance that hurts us all,” and added that the precariousness of the public health system is a “historical debt” built up government by government. He added that “there are funds to guarantee supplies, but the impact of the pandemic is very great.”

In addition to political and public criticism of the government and the health portfolio, there is the delay in the delivery of vaccines, which for the moment are limited to the 4,000 doses of the Sputnik V already administered to 2,000 healthcare workers. Mazzoleni had refrained from providing dates for the delivery of the 1 million Russian vaccines already negotiated, as well as the 4.3 million doses agreed with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Covax facility for equitable access to countries with fewer resources.

“I don’t want to anticipate it because it’s not up to me. Our estimates were for mid-March. I hope to receive official notification as soon as possible,” he said of the Covax vaccines.

Since the first positive case reported on March 7th, 2020, Paraguay, among the countries that lag the furthest behind in immunizing its 7.3 million population, has totaled just over 162,000 cases, while the number of deaths exceeds 3,200.

Source: Infobae