Health Ministry denies shelving doctors’ resignations, says it received only 62

Paraguay’s Health Ministry has rejected as “very reckless” an accusation that it shelved resignation documents submitted by pediatric surgeons. The dispute centers on how many doctors have formally resigned and whether hospital administrations forwarded their paperwork to the ministry.

Juan Marcelo Estigarribia, the ministry’s director general of the cabinet, said the central registry operated normally. He said union spokesman Roberto Riveros personally submitted documents when he visited the ministry, and officials accepted them and assigned a case number without difficulty. The registry, he added, remained open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and handled various types of administrative filings.

Estigarribia said the ministry had not denied access to the registry or retained documents presented there. He also said any doctor or group of doctors could submit a resignation directly, including through a third party, without routing it through a hospital director.

The main disagreement concerns the numbers. The medical group says about 196 resignations have been signed, with the figure rising to 430 when preliminary reports from various hospitals are included. The ministry says it had formally received only 62 resignations, all submitted on Monday. Estigarribia said no additional resignations arrived at the registry on Tuesday, either from individual doctors or from a group seeking to file a new block of departures.

Asked how doctors could prove that their documents had been delivered, the ministry spokesman pointed to the administrative process. Each resignation submitted through the registry receives a seal, a revenue stamp and a case number. Those records form the ministry’s stated documentary basis for determining which resignations have been formally received.

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A very reckless accusation.