Economic Ills Breeding A Health Crisis In Mexico Infant Mortality, Epidemics, Malnutrition On The Rise
When 61 newborn babies died in 4-1/2 months at the government hospital in Durango earlier this year, dark rumors surfaced of massive medical malpractice. Or worse.
“Punish the killers!” screamed grieving mothers who gathered outside the local health department office. Furious parents even began to speculate about the unspeakable - that doctors deliberately were killing the infants to sell their organs for profit.
But no, an in-depth federal investigation concluded in August, there was no foul play at Durango General Hospital. It was simply this: The hospital was poorly equipped and understaffed; the babies were premature and malnourished; their parents were too poor to buy even basic medicines that the hospital, too, could ill-afford.
The team of medical experts from Mexico City concluded that Durango’s infant-mortality rate was not unusual. These and other recent findings indicate that this nation’s deep economic crisis has created a parallel disaster in health care. The combination of inflation, unemployment and devaluation has left most Mexicans with less to spend on medicine, doctors, and, for many, the minimal nutrition to fend off disease.
Although experts disagree about the potential long-term harm of the current situation, it is especially distressing to Mexicans because they had begun to see public health here markedly improve from Third World conditions. But now, just 10 months into one of the worst recessions in modern Mexican history, the official statistics are chilling:
Malnutrition in the capital alone has increased sixfold since the crisis began last December.
In the countryside, where the effect of roaring inflation and frozen wages is even more painful, as many as a fifth of Mexico’s 90 million people are considered “severely undernourished.” But researchers are uncertain of exact numbers; the government has no money for detailed studies this year.
The incidence of Third World diseases, such as cholera and dengue fever, among a weakened population is almost 10 times higher than a year ago, when the government reported that it had them under control.
Prices of basic medicines and personalcare items needed to combat or prevent disease have skyrocketed an average of 45 percent since January.
Business at the nation’s private hospitals - the best source of medical care in Mexico - is down an average of 40 percent, as newly impoverished middle-class families are forced to return to subsidized care at now-overcrowded and underfunded government hospitals and clinics.
“We’re moving backward,” said Roberto Robles Garnica, the opposition chairman of Mexico’s Congressional Health Commission in the federal House of Deputies. “The government would have you believe that the crisis is manageable, that it isn’t that grave. But a great mass - about 40 million people - are living in conditions of poverty. …
“This year’s economic crisis drastically sharpened already declining economic and health problems. We are now living a tragedy where the minimum wage can only buy one-third of basic necessities - what is absolutely indispensable in calories and protein. The conditions are truly dramatic.”
Access to quality medical care also has worsened as a direct result of the economic crisis, in which inflation officially is running at 40 percent.
Deputy Health Secretary Jose Narro Robles recently conceded that 10 million people remain uncovered, even by government care. Cash-strapped Mexican families - whose purchasing power was cut by more than half within weeks of the government’s harsh peso devaluation last December - also can no longer afford private doctors and hospitals.
Dr. Francisco Tenorio, one of Mexico’s leading oncologists and president of the Mexican Surgical Academy, said the results are long waits and reduced care at overtaxed government hospitals, which increasingly are facing a financial crisis. The institutions are funded by the nation’s social security system, which - as in the United States - is financed by deductions from worker wages. But, with more than 1 million Mexicans thrown out of jobs since the crisis began, social security contributions have plummeted. The public health system can barely maintain itself.