The nation's new administration is making a show of taking health care seriously.
The IESS health care program to which many Expats are subscribed is 'in crisis,' according to the new vice president, Dr. Alfredo Borrero.
Borrero has been touring government-funded hospitals in Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca and other large cities in Ecuador. He has been talking with administrators, doctors and staff.
The vice president has concluded that the hospitals lack equipment, staff, supplies and training. His goal is to bring the hospitals up to international standards.
Borrero says the government has lost tens of millions of dollars in money and resources largely due to "mafias" running supply schemes at Ecuadorian hospitals. He says funds for hospitals were diverted by the long-running Correa administration to other purposes .. and not replaced. The result is widespread inefficiency and inadequacy in the hospital system, he says.
Borrero learned that a Guayaquil hospital recently was turning away injured and sick non-covid patients under a policy that only covid patients would be treated there, without coordinating the policy with any of the city's other hospitals.
Borrero, who is also co-leading Ecuador's covid fight, is heading up the formulation of a national review of hospitals and a response to the IESS situation.
Borrero is a Cuenca native and neurosurgeon who was trained in family-practice medicine. Between 2005 and 2014, he was medical director of Hospital Metropolitano in Quito, widely considered to be the leading hospital in Ecuador. He has also been the head of a national association of private hospitals and has four decades of experience in hospital administration.
Sources... www.cuencahighlife.com and the
Wikipedia page for Alfredo Borrero