MEXICO CITY (apro).— Faced with the lack of psychiatric medications, around 300 health workers protested this Tuesday around the Tlalpan hospital area, in Mexico City, demanding the supply of these drugs.
Shouting “out with Alcocer!” and “Gatell out!”, referring to the Secretary and Undersecretary of Health, Jorge Alcocer and Hugo López-Gatell, respectively, the protesters are workers at the Fray Bernardino Álvarez Psychiatric Hospital and the Juan N. Navarro Children’s Psychiatric Hospital.
Outside the first hospital they placed a banner that said: “Mr. President Lic. Andrés Manuel López Obrador: the workers of the psychiatric hospitals request your intervention in the face of the lack of medicines and supplies, irregularities in the food services and lack of uniforms”.
During the demonstration, the leader of section 17 of the National Union of Workers of the Ministry of Health (SNTSA), Marco Antonio Sánchez, assured that for six months health personnel have not been able to properly care for patients due to the serious shortage of medicines and medical supplies.
To make themselves heard, the workers marched around the hospital complex that is on San Fernando Avenue, closing the roads in that area that is located between Viaducto Tlalpan and Calzada de Tlalpan, to the south of the city.
They waved banners and banners that read: “Medications are urgently needed!” “Mental health is a priority” and “Fair treatment of the worker”.
And they advanced that, if they do not find a solution to their demands, they will take to the streets once more to demand that the government of the Fourth Transformation comply with its obligation to adequately care for patients in psychiatric hospitals.
However, López-Gatell has been pointing out that there is no shortage of psychiatric drugs. Still on February 28, he assured the following:
“There is a shortage in the private sector, note that in the public sector we do have the medicines because we buy them from international suppliers. In the public sector we have medicines once morest these mental health and neurological problems”.
Gatell even indicated that the Psicofarma company was sanctioned for delaying deliveries of psychiatric drugs.
But during today’s march, Marco Antonio Sánchez denied the undersecretary, stating:
“We do not know regarding these problems with Gatell and that company, we are not administrators. The only thing we know is that our patients are suffering for lack of medicines”.
The protest was joined by some relatives of patients suffering from the shortage of medicines, both in Fray Bernardino and in Juan N. Navarro.
