2023-06-08 06:28:00
The situation of San Justo Children’s Hospital, in La Matanza, is increasingly alarming. For him exodus of doctorsthe only pediatric health center in the western suburbs had to limit your services. It has been two weeks now that the guard of the institution in the most populated district of the province, which used to serve between 180 and 300 boys daily, has been closed and only receives life-threatening cases. It does not have enough specialists, according to their workers. “Guard without doctors”, was read today on the poster attached to the side glass of the attention space. “Increase and personnel already”, they wrote on the yellow cardboard that is attached to the door.
Sometimes, the guard opens on Thursdays because there are two doctors who can cover it, and on Friday nights or Saturdays, when the director, Ana Castrucci, can do it. The deputy director, Pablo Couseiro, used to do it too, but he resigned last week. “Those who remain do what they can and mainly deal with emergencies,” says Laura Verzoleti, a biochemist on duty and on the laboratory floor who has worked there for 18 years.
in the last two months 45 doctors resigned, the workers said. Currently, they denounced the hospital only has one professional per specialty. There is no hepatologist or pulmonologist. There is only one psychiatrist in the entire center who has hospitalization for this area, so it is not possible to form the necessary interdisciplinary team. “The hospital is emptying,” Verzoleti summarized.
“In Neurology, for example, there is only one professional for all the children of La Matanza, who attends only 12 hours a week. Nothing more”, exemplified Marcela Cavo, a biochemist who has been working at the establishment for 32 years. And she continued: “Neurology is a tremendous need, because there are any number of little ones who, due to different situations, have cerebral palsy or various or compulsive disabilities. there should be five [profesionales]at least”.
“The most visible situation is the guard, but all services are committed. The hospital is working with 30% of the current plant“, said to THE NATION the pediatrician Sandra Verta. In all services, only emergencies are attended, that is, patients at risk of life.
The hospitalization area is maintained, but, the workers indicated, They have an internist for every 55 patients. For outpatient clinics, they continued, there are three pediatricians, so there is no care for healthy children or follow-up of those who are discharged. Shifts depend on the number of staff that day. There, the pediatricians said that around 2 in the morning there are already patients sleeping at the door to enter. There is a lack of nurses -only on the night shift, five have resigned in the last year-, cleaning and maintenance staff and orderlies (there is only one on the morning shift).
At this time, the season Upper and Lower Respiratory Infections (IRAB), a reinforcement is carried out with a post for cases of bronchiolitis that attends only newborns and children up to 10 years of age. But neither do they have doctors to fill this position. “We are working as we can, we attend to emergencies. Depending on the seriousness of the case, we call a therapy doctor or an internist, the nurse cannot decide,” said nurse Juan José Wan Der Lean.
workers demand a salary recomposition for all health personnel, improvements in working conditions and more budget for the Health area. With these demands, the workers mobilized today in the San Justo square, in front of the municipality of La Matanza, to ask the mayor, the Kirchnerist Fernando Espinoza, for answers.
THE NATION contacted the municipality, but at the end of this note, they did not receive answers to the questions asked.
Daniel Ramírez is a nurse and has been working at the hospital for 31 years. He charges $120,000. “I am privileged, there are people here who earn $60,000,” he said. Without counting bonuses or extras, the professionals pointed out, the basic salaries of a nurse are almost $65,000. In the case of doctors, they charge $1100 per hour. “we are destitute. It never happened that so many doctors resigned together”, added Evangelina Salazar, General Services maid of this institution 13 years ago. She charges $87,000 for the six days of work a week. “In another minimal hospital they charge double. If you go to Tigre, it will surely be full, not to mention if you cross into the city. Here all jobs are paid lower. The incumbents have resigned, it’s all quite anarchic,” said pediatrician Javier Stump.
Verta did her residency at this hospital and had a fellowship at the Garrahan Hospital before becoming a pediatrician at the institution. However, she has four other jobs. “It’s either that or not to eat,” she summed up.
Cavo commented that the municipality offered them a bonus of $70,000 just for the doctors who are on duty. “If a neurologist came, for example, he would not charge for that anymore because he does not do guard duty, it is so that the guard does not continue to be dismantled,” he said.
Espinoza announced in April a 70% salary increase for municipal employees. However, workers at the San Justo Children’s Hospital pointed out that it is not real and reported that the increases reached only 40%: they received 18% in March, 6% in May, another 6% in June and next month. they were promised 10%.
Doctors denounce that there are professionals in an informal hiring situation. Cynthia is one of them. “They don’t pay me on-call hours and I do them. One chooses the hospital, I was trained here. Entering the guard and seeing that there is no patient breaks me. This is going to lead to generations of poorly trained doctors. One can study, but the practice is something else, ”she said.
“It’s tremendous, and nobody cares, that’s the worst. Because we have made requests and demands and marches and strikes and everything and they don’t listen to us, they don’t care and we are getting worse and worse. The truth is that it is very sad for us, because I love him at the hospital, we all love him, we all train there. We would like this to work, but it seems that only for us”, described Cavo.
“We don’t have any answers and everything is closed,” said Wan Der Lean. They were promised a meeting next Monday at 1:00 p.m. with the municipality’s deputy chief of staff, Daniel Horacio Barrera. “It is the first time that they receive us in the history of the hospital,” said Verta.
In front of the municipality, with a megaphone, he said in front of those who had gone to the square: “The hospital has been fighting for more than five years and has been severely punished. We have many compañeros on trial and that has intimidated us”.
“No to dismantling”, read one of the signs in the square. The nephrologist Carina Cianiavini depicted this situation. “One saw how the doctors from the hospital were disappearing little by little, that also compromises those who are trained and who work in public and private places. And this crisis means that the doctors who come are not trained doctors. People are not going to have public health. Who is going to take care of us in ten or twenty years? What training will the doctor who will treat us have? For two weeks the children’s hospital guard has been without doctors, something that has never been seen, and nobody is interested, because there is no response. I never thought what was going to happen, and as it happens, it compromises the rest of the services”.
And he completed: “Where are all those boys who were being treated there going? Even if they go to another hospital, they treat two or three people, no one is going to put another doctor in the Morón hospital because more patients arrive. So, you ask yourself, those three or four doctors who attend, how do they attend to each one of the children when the demand is greater? That gives you exhaustion and, obviously, the possibility of human error. Or people who get sick because they bring their sick child and they can’t take care of him. The few that are there are forced to resign. There I understood what the dismantling of public health meant: let everything deteriorate, let the doctors leave alone, and people who have no money have nowhere to care for their children. In turn, people who have a prepaid or a social work, are not going to have trained doctors either. One thing leads to another, and it is very sad, very sad for us who want the hospital”.
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