The Center for Nuclear Medicine and Radiotherapy was inaugurated in Santa Cruz on September 23. Photo: MHE
La Paz, September 27, 2022 (ABI). – Thanks to the Universal Health Insurance (SUS) and the agreements with the Caja Nacional, Cordes and Cossmil, the nuclear medicine and radiotherapy centers of El Alto and Santa Cruz offer completely free services to cancer patients, who can access care by three ways.
The director of the Center for Nuclear Medicine and Radiotherapy (CMNyR) El Alto, Ruddy Mauricio Nishino, specified that one of the routes is the SUS, the second by transfer of one of the boxes or the third which is to go to the facilities of both centers .
In the case of patients assigned to the SUS and who require care at the CMNyR, they must request a transfer from the third or second level hospital with updated laboratory tests and cabinet studies. In the case of radiotherapy, they need to present the tomography, blood tests and pathological anatomy, which is the indicator that there is an oncological pathology.
While the patients of the National Health Fund (CNS), the Cordes Health Fund and the Military Social Security Corporation (Cossmil) need to have the transfer of the oncologist who treats them.
In the CMNyR it will be defined if “a reconsultation in the oncology area is carried out or a treatment in radiotherapy, brachytherapy or clinical oncology will be directly defined,” Nishino told Bolivia TV.
Individuals, who are not affiliated with the SUS or any savings bank, can also go to the CMNyR, where “the oncologist will review and define the therapy that must be followed or carry out complementary studies that can also be carried out in the center ”.
Nishino clarified that the service is completely free under the agreements that the network of centers has with the Ministry of Health and the representatives of the CNS, Cordes and Cossmil.
“With the agreements we have with the Ministry of Health, for SUS patients, and with the savings banks for their insured, during the treatment no extra charge is made to the patient, the reconciliation is done directly with the entities at the end of the month ”, he emphasized.
In both the El Alto and Santa Cruz centers, the service capacity is more than 100 people per day, and this will increase even more in 2023 when the third unit to be built in the Achumani area comes into operation. South of the city of La Paz.
“When the Achumani center is finished, we hope in the next quarter of 2023, there will be coordinated work between the three centers,” Nishino pointed out.
The CMNyR of El Alto, located in Parcopata of district 8, began operations in March of this year; while the one in Santa Cruz, installed in the Pampa area of the Island, was inaugurated on September 23 as a tribute from the national government to the 212 years of the cry for freedom of the department of Santa Cruz.
Each of the centers has two linear accelerators (LINAC), a high-dose-rate brachytherapy team, with a capacity to care for eight patients per day, and a simulator tomograph (CT); while in the area of Clinical Oncology and Outpatient Chemotherapy, it has eight offices for the care of cancer patients, seven armchairs and three stretchers for cancer treatment (chemotherapy), equipped with an infusion pump and clinical control monitoring.
They also have positron emission computed tomography (PET/CT) equipment and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT/CT) equipment.
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