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Health system collapsing through government indifference, Colorado lawmaker says Image: Oliver Solberg, Instagram
🇵🇾 Paraguay /Health & Science

Health system collapsing through government indifference, Colorado lawmaker says

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Ongoing story
  • Paraguayan opposition lawmaker Roberto González accused the government of allowing the health system to collapse because of shortages of care, medicines and ambulances.
  • He cited a patient’s death after an ambulance shortage, a lack of a catheter and no available hospital bed, and criticized the deployment of 44 ambulances to a rally.
  • González said a national doctors’ strike and mass resignations have worsened the shortage of specialists and left patients with fewer options.

“People are dying, but we have a government that does not react, or reacts badly and too late,” opposition lawmaker Roberto González said as he denounced Paraguay’s worsening health crisis.

González, a dissident Colorado Party legislator, pointed to shortcomings at a hospital in Cordillera that he said were being repeated across the country. He cited the case of a daughter who reported that her father died after there was no ambulance because of the rally, no catheter and then no bed at San Jorge Hospital.

People are dying, but we have a government that does not react, or reacts badly and too late.

— Roberto GonzálezThe lawmaker criticized the government’s response to the health crisis.

The government had told lawmakers that no area had been left without an ambulance and that services were guaranteed, González said. “The government sent 44 ambulances to the rally. There were vehicles for the spectacle, but not for a man who needed one,” he said.

He also warned that a doctors’ strike and mass resignations were pushing the system toward collapse. The nationwide strike began on Aug. 24 over chronic shortages of medicines and medical supplies, as well as what González described as a government that offered promises instead of action. He said the resignations were especially serious because there were no replacements.

The government sent 44 ambulances to the rally. There were vehicles for the spectacle, but not for a man who needed one.

— Roberto GonzálezGonzález contrasted ambulance deployment for a rally with the case of a patient who died.

González added that Argentina no longer accepts foreign patients, removing what he called an earlier “escape valve” for Paraguay’s strained health system. “Many of our compatriots crossed the river because they found no answers here,” he said.

The lawmaker argued that the crisis exposed hospitals without supplies, doctors or ambulances. He rejected the government’s claim that Congress had failed to provide enough resources, saying the legislature had allocated more to health than any previous Congress. He blamed the crisis on the health minister’s failure to execute the budget on time.

Many of our compatriots crossed the river because they found no answers here.

— Roberto GonzálezHe described patients’ previous use of medical care in Argentina.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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