D.Cancer patients denounced that they were burned during their radiotherapy treatments at the El Alto Nuclear Medicine Center, which has generated solidarity and protest from other patients, who went on a hunger strike to demand explanations for what happened.
On Wednesday night, with the mediation of the Ombudsman, the Ministry of Health and representatives of the Short-Term Social Security Supervision Authority (Asuss) agreed to carry out an audit of the treatments that resulted in serious burns. in both patients, which allowed raising the pressure measurement.
This Thursday, Página Siete published the story of the two patients, for which it resorted to the Nuclear Medicine Center, the National Health Fund and Asuss, without obtaining a counterpart. What usually happens in these cases is that public institutions do not respond to those affected, but neither do they respond to journalistic requests, covering their activities under a cloak of secrecy, despite the fact that they have the obligation to be transparent to the public and that is precisely why they are the media.
The Center for Nuclear Medicine is not just any hospital, it works with radiation and that is why the news that two patients suffered burns is of great concern, not only for them, but for the rest of the patients who resort to treatment for cancer and for the general public.
Its construction was surrounded by strong controversy, but, finally, the criticism ceased with the hope that this center, which was built with Russian technology, would serve to effectively treat cancer, a disease that had become a death sentence in Bolivia. due to the poor conditions of the health system.
However, this medium recently visited the place and collected testimonies from patients who revealed an insensitive bureaucracy so that a patient can be cared for, from unsuccessful trips from the interior of the country to treatments rejected because some letter is misspelled in the order medical.
To this panorama are now added the burns in two patients, who, far from obtaining relief, have left the center as more pain. One of them even has trouble walking due to the severity of the burns.
It is urgent that the authorities deal not only with the case of the two affected patients, but with the care model of the center as a whole, going through the suitability of the staff, the state of the equipment, the availability of drugs and the empathy of the health workers with the sick.
