Health crisis: Family Health Unit works with furniture from home as thieves strip the building

From the outside, the La Victoria Family Health Unit in San Lorenzo looks like a modern public investment. Inside, it stands empty and partly stripped, without formal authorisation from Paraguay’s Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare.

The facility in the Reducto neighbourhood was completed months ago after the municipality donated the land and the state financed construction. Yet the ministry never supplied the promised equipment, medical materials or basic medicines. Residents now report that criminals have dismantled parts of the building.

Despite those conditions, a healthcare team has been working there since January. The team includes a family-medicine specialist, two licensed professionals and two community agents. With no official budget to furnish the unit, staff brought furniture from their own homes so they could begin registering and assisting local residents.

“We are working with the furniture we brought from home. When we arrived in January, the unit had been neglected and had nothing. We do everything we can with what we have to register and care for the community,” said Dr. Carlos Rogelio Rojas, a physician at La Victoria.

Rojas said the team reported the building’s condition to the 11th health region, which arranged structural repairs through the construction company. The unit nevertheless remains formally unauthorised, without air conditioners, official examination beds or basic medicines. For residents of Reducto, the lack of a functioning local clinic places another burden on low-income families, older people and those who are ill, who must travel elsewhere or spend their own money to receive care.

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We are working with the furniture we brought from home. When we arrived in January, the unit had been neglected and had nothing. We do everything we can with what we have to register and care for the community.