By Albinson Linares
Alexis loved to sing, he liked to run and he was always smiling although, since he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia on January 30 of last year, he spent his days among doctors and nurses.
Yamileth del Río, his mother, was protesting for months in various governmental instances of Nuevo León, the state where he lives, and even in Mexico City due to the shortage of cancer drugs.
“I had to fight with medicines such as methotrexate, vincristine and with L-asparaginase. That exhausted me because the shortage was always there,” he explains by telephone to Noticias Telemundo from his home in Monterrey, Mexico. “Although some medications arrive, others run out. In addition, sometimes the hospital teams did not work,” he added.
According to her, interruptions in treatment undermined Alexis’s health to the point that he couldn’t recover from a relapse that left him practically without defenses, at the mercy of pneumonia that caused his death on February 19.
“I am not looking for guilty parties, some say that it is the responsibility of the presidency, others of the governor, but I feel it is the government in general. Everyone is responsible for the health of our children and they have to face us, ”says Del Río.
Recent data from the Mexican government indicate that the cancer is the third cause of death in the country and, between 2010 and 2018, there was a 22% increase in deaths related to this disease that went from 70,240 to 85,754.
The World Health Organization (WHO) states that there must be 20 medical oncologists per million inhabitants and in Mexico, a country with a population of more than 119 million, there are only 2195 oncologists. Also in states like Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Morelos, Zacatecas and Quintana Roo there are no cancer treatment centers.
According to the parents of children with cancer, the shortage of medications began to occur in September 2018, but it became recurrent since Andrés Manuel López Obrador rose to power.
In February, April and May 2019, the absence of drugs became a nightmare marked by names like methotrexate, filgrastim and vincristine. When they got any of those medicines, then cyclophosphamide, daunorubicin or temozolomide was missing. And, in many states of the interior of the country, the lack of basic implements such as gauze, alcohol and syringes was also denounced.
This situation caused family members to take various actions such as demonstrating in the streets and avenues, closing the access roads to the International Airport of Mexico City and sitting at fruitless negotiating tables with the health authorities.
“We decided to leave the negotiating table because the government did not comply with the requests. In my case, my daughter is lucky because she is receiving treatment but last year she needed it and in the interior of the country there is a lot of shortage, ”explains Israel Rivas, one of the spokespersons for parents of children with cancer. “The authorities say that the medicines have arrived but we ask you to show them and they refused. We asked them to be tested and they didn’t want to, so that’s a lie. ”
Last Tuesday, Rivas led with several families a symbolic closing of the National Palace, headquarters of the Executive Branch of Mexico. He was also accompanied by organizations of women suffering from breast cancer and LGBT groups, who reported the shortage of retrovirals and other drugs for their treatments.
The Mexican president’s reactions have been diverse from denying the shortage and blaming medical officials and laboratories for monopolizing the drugs to admitting that supplies will be imported from various countries like China and India. “Here there was a monopoly, we are talking about a business of billions of pesos, and we have faced resistance,” López Obrador said on February 25 at his usual morning conference. “Even if we have to buy medicines in other countries, supply will be guaranteed.”
Family members of children with cancer say that drugs have arrived at the medical facilities of the capital but “dropper”, and say that many hospitals in the interior of the country have only received donations from the United States. “We will continue with the protests until the supply failures are resolved, it is sad but it seems that the officials do not understand how terrible it is to see a child dying due to lack of medicine. It causes death, ”says Rivas, explaining that several groups have already asked WHO to declare a health emergency.
The legal solution
In September 2019, the streets of Mexico City saw the beginning of a series of different manifestations. In a metropolis where dozens of protests take place every week, many people were surprised to see groups of parents, with boys and girls of gleaming skulls and an emaciated appearance, who took the streets and manifested themselves with banners that had messages like “No I want to die, I need my chemo to live ”and“ Without medicines our children die ”.
Attorney Andrea Rocha, 26, says she couldn’t believe that was happening in her country. Seeing the street actions and the long lines of weak children walking in the sun asking for their medications, he decided to approach the demonstrating mothers. They were from Nuevo León, in the north of the country, and had traveled to the capital because The shortage in his region was serious.
“After a month of protests I offered them the possibility of filing an amparo, which is an ideal legal mechanism to guarantee the supply of medicines,” explains Rocha. “And we started with 20 cases in Nuevo León and we already have 60 in that region.”
The lawyer, who also collaborates with the Democratic Revolution Party, a leftist movement, says she drives more than 85 cases across the country and warns that, if the supply of these patients is interrupted, the health and political authorities – which in the cases of Mexico City include López Obrador – are exposed to various administrative sanctions, sentences of 3 to 9 years in prison and the dismissal of office.
Despite this, the amparos are not a guarantee. Lorena Aguilar Molina belongs to the first group of Nuevo León that requested and obtained the judicial measure to have the treatment of her 2-year-old son Evan.
“In September last year there was no vincristine, then there was no cyclophosphamide and that delayed it two cycles,” he explains vehemently and recalls that Evan could never recover from that. “He also started giving pneumonia and there were no medications to mist it, they only put water on him, they didn’t have a catheter either, and he got very weak. Evan died bled on December 26.
On January 22, a trade signed by Thalía Concepción Laguna Aragón, senior officer of the Ministry of Finance, was published, indicating that the consolidated purchases of medicines will begin in March this year.
In order to have medicine available in the health system during the first four months of 2020, the Senior Officer asked the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) to extend her contracts with the companies with which she had signed in 2019, or request delivery Anticipated medication. The list includes 2263 medications, including cancer medications such as methotrexate, cyclophosphamide and folinic acid, keys in cancer treatments.
However, relatives of the children affected and lawyer Rocha warn that, in the rush to get the medicines, the government is importing drugs without following the quality guidelines imposed by the authorities themselves. “To address the shortage they are importing generic medications but we cannot allow that because, sometimes, when changing drugs some do not meet the standards and that causes serious relapses. With that you don’t play, ”Rocha warns.
For Xavier Tello, expert in health communication, the problem of shortages was multiplied due to the decision of the López Obrador government to obtain the medicines through the process of consolidated purchases, a method in which the federal government negotiates the purchase of medicines for all the institutes of the country.
“Instead of correcting one thing at a time, they wanted to correct everything in such a drastic way that the system was hindered,” he said in an interview. “In this war of power, of learning, of not understanding, is where we are having the big problem of shortage there is.”
While the absence of medicines is being corrected, many children from poor families suffer damage that is sometimes irreversible. Gael, 4, liked to play with carts and ran around his house all the time until one day, without warning, he began to stumble on everything because he stopped seeing.
“He began to cry and we care a lot,” explains Luis Fernando Reyes Guzmán, his father, recalling on January 25, 2018 when he was diagnosed. “He has bilateral retinoblastoma that is eye cancer and it was fine while there were medicines. But in February of last year no filgrastim was achieved until mid-March, ”he says sadly because since that month, Gael lost more than 80% of vision.
Now he doesn’t run, but because he loves food he says he wants to learn to cook. Although he lives in a world of shadows, and specialists say he will not be able to recover his sight, he likes to taste, taste, smell and touch. His father says that it is as if he wanted to compensate with the rest of the senses, the world that he already lost with his eyes.
Reyes usually demonstrates and supports other parents who they don’t get the medications. He becomes enraged when he reads that they are told that they are paid or that they are clash groups of the movements opposed to the current government. “I protest that my son has the medications in time and form, and that it is accepted that there is a shortage because they treat us as if we were crazy,” he explains while saying that Gael is lucky because “he is already protected” so he may not Missing drugs. However, it is already too late.
“It gives impotence that, instead of solving the problem, many times the government disqualifies us. But we will continue on the streets so that other children do not have this happened to Gael, ”he says.
Read also:
A child with cancer begs López Obrador for help with chemotherapies
Parents of children with cancer protest and face the police
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