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https://www.pagina12.com.ar/268571-coronavirus-en-bolivia-beni-sufre-horas-de-terror
May 27, 2020 ? Updated 6 hours ago
The department declared the sanitary collapse
Coronavirus in Bolivia: Beni suffers hours of terror
The cases multiplied to such an extent that some bodies lie in private homes. In parallel, an improvised and exclusive cemetery for victims of covid-19 had to be installed.
If the coronavirus exposes the most brutal features of the de facto government of Bolivia, the department of Beni is today its saddest example. Just a month ago, the first case of covid-19 was detected, but 1,242 people have already been infected and 77 have died in this humble region of the Bolivian Amazon bordering Brazil.
Beni is the second department most hit by the pandemic after Santa Cruz, despite being one of the least populated in the country with half a million inhabitants. The cases multiplied to such an extent that some corpses lie in the homes for lack of coffins. In parallel, an improvised and exclusive cemetery had to be installed for victims of the covid-19 and even suspected of contagion, which implies that the dead could be far more than those officially reported. Beni declared a health disaster after the collapse of his health system: amid the corruption scandal over the purchase of overpriced respirators, supplies, tests and health personnel are lacking.
In the Beni department, around 50 percent of the doctors in the public sector stopped attending after contracting covid-19; The same is true for 24 percent of its nursing staff. When coronavirus cases skyrocketed, health personnel desperately came to the national government for help due to a lack of biosecurity materials, equipment, and even basic medicines like acetaminophen. For this reason, health workers arrived this week from La Paz, and another group of volunteers approached from Sucre. But it is rather about particular initiatives, distant from the action of the State.
"Nobody wants to work in health centers out of fear. Although there are doctors who come from other departments, it will be to replace what we have lost and the saturation of our hospitals," said Lino Mamani in dialogue with P?gina / 12, councilor and president of the legal commission of the municipality of Trinidad. "Hospitals are collapsed, there are no sanitary conditions for the minimum care of affected patients, medical personnel are entering a stage of exhaustion and if serious measures are not taken, the system will collapse even more," he stressed in the Same sense the former Director General of Legal Affairs of the Ministry of Education during the government of Evo Morales, Silvia Mej?a.
In addition, tests to detect covid-19 must be sent to the National Center for Tropical Diseases in Santa Cruz, because there is no laboratory in Beni. "Jeanine ??ez and (the Minister of the Presidency) Yerko N??ez transport their loved ones and their friends on state planes, while in departments such as Beni the evidence is transported by land, it takes days to arrive and other times they do not arrive," Jimena Tejerina, member of the network of Communitarian Antipatriarchal Feminism, said about it.
House for house
The brand new Minister of Health of Bolivia, Eidy Roca, announced that starting on Monday, June 1, the city of Trinidad, the epicenter of the pandemic in Beni, will be encapsulated and that medical personnel will go out house to house looking for residents to present coronavirus symptoms. "But so far there has been no firm response from the national government," Mamani said from Beninese territory. "They have just arrived with six ministers and the first thing they propose is a seven-day encapsulation, crazy. Without a diagnosis, this government comes to tell us that for seven days no one can leave. And that is going to break the quarantine because the cry starvation of the children reaches the heart and will make parents break the isolation, "added the councilman of Trinidad.
With the empathy that characterizes ??ez's cabinet, Defense Minister Fernando L?pez warned on Tuesday that members of the Armed Forces cannot become "babysitters" for every Beniano. "The troop is going to do what it has to do to the extent that people allow themselves to be helped. We cannot go from being a first-line containment to babysitters from each of the people in Beni," said L?pez, interviewed by the EZ channel. -we-can't-go-from-being-a-front-line-containment-to-the-villagers-in-the-beni-or-in-bolivia / "> Unitel. Despite this, the pandemic also strikes the military caste: out of a tiny 0.15 percent of covid-19 infected within the national staff, 85 percent are registered in the city of Trinidad.
Covid cemetery
In Beni, there are deaths that do not enter the pandemic's records because many victims died waiting for the evidence of covid-19, which suggests that the death rate may be much higher. Something similar occurs with those infected: several stay at home because there is no space in hospitals or because they resort to self-medication or natural medicines, a tradition deeply rooted in different regions of Bolivia. All of them are ignored by official figures.
Faced with the exponential increase in deaths, the municipality of Trinidad enabled the first cemetery for people who died from the new coronavirus. It already houses at least 148 dead: 57 confirmed by the laboratory and 91 suspected of having carried the virus. At the site, located eight kilometers down the road to Santa Cruz, wooden crosses multiply where at most the dead are identified with handwritten signs. The "covid cemetery", as they call it in Trinidad, is nothing more than a plain in the middle of the tropical vegetation where tractors constantly dig graves.
Marcela Cu?llar, a neighbor of the city of Trinidad, explained to the newspaper La Raz?n a few days ago the scenario that she observes daily in the cemetery: "We see how the bodies are moved in drawers or only bags out of the city, there a tractor places them to the grave. Family members are prohibited from reaching the cemetery. " For his part, Mayor Mario Su?rez asked the national Ministry of Health for biosecurity material for the personnel who transport and bury the deceased.
But the de facto government seems little to worry about the situation in Beni, at a time when 7136 infections and 274 deaths from coronavirus are registered throughout the country. "Having a Benyan president and Benyan ministers, they have not had the heart to watch over the people who are dying. This is the sad thing, today they approve resources for municipalities with fewer infected people but they have not had the heart to provide the economic resources we need to attend this pandemic, "said Mamani, who has already presented two projects that were approved in the municipality of Trinidad: the" Law of priority to fight against covid-19 "and the" Law of care with solidarity and integral food "aimed at all families from Trinidad who live from day to day.
It is that ??ez applies his authoritarian look towards politics even in the midst of the health emergency. "The pandemic is being handled irresponsibly. The president of the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights in Beni, Juan Acosta Calla?, died with symptoms of coronavirus, but days earlier he denounced the way in which the ministers referred to the allocation of resources in the department, indicating that they were not going to pay tribute to the political image of the governor of the indigenous caucus and ally to MAS, Fanor Amapo, and that for that reason they were not going to make disbursements, "said Tejerina, adding:" In this way it is being managed the de facto government: in a corrupt and racist way because the life of the people does not interest them. "
Report: Guido Vassallo.
