The health system in Mexico is not only in the doldrums, but it is “a disaster”, a description said by doctors belonging to hospitals and clinics of various public agencies. It is not only the precarious budget that the government allocates to it, which would already be the subject of an article, but the model itself, which was put to the test with the pandemic and did not even approve of it.
And if not, ask the more than 325,000 Mexicans, according to official numbers, who lost their lives in the pandemic, both because of the disease itself and because of the notable flaws in the health system.
Hence my surprise when I recently heard a doctor from the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) who spoke wonders about his institution, but he forgot the “small detail” of mentioning the enormous shortage of medicines that has existed for three years and medium, in addition to the persistent lack of supplies necessary for patient care.
In addition, health personnel have not only suffered from the syndrome of burnout after two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, but they were not even given the necessary and appropriate medical equipment to protect themselves from the SARS-CoV 2 virus. Or have we already forgotten the medical gowns that just by opening or folding them would break? And the gloves and masks of very low quality that they received from the health authority?
In this space we have been very critical of the management of the pandemic in Mexico, because we believe that due to its mishandling, thousands of lives were lost, which could have been avoided simply by promoting the use of face masks, among other things. sanitary measures.
Also, we have said that the Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell, lost his character as an epidemiologist specialist and became one more politician at the service of the 4T, as was demonstrated in his recent trip to Switzerland, where he participated in the 75th Assembly World Health Organization, when he took the opportunity to remark that “neoliberalism has promoted lifestyles that give rise to chronic diseases and risks in the face of Covid-19.”
Arterial hypertension (HTN), also known as the “silent killer”, due to its asymptomatic nature, continues to lurk in our country, affecting around 43 million Mexicans.
Within the framework of World HT Day, which was commemorated on May 17, the GREHTA (Group of Specialists in HT) launched RITHA, which is the HT Registry, which will allow to know more in detail both the prevalence of this condition in Mexico as well as the treatments and the level of damage to the target organs of the patients.
Despite all the efforts that have been made both in medical societies and in the pharmaceutical industry to raise awareness about hypertension, this has not been enough. In Mexico there are many hypertensive patients and, therefore, they do not know that the “silent killer” is stalking them.
RIHTA represents the urgent need for the country to generate data to show the problem and take measures in public health policies, in addition to updating all those traditional risk factors for having HTA in our population, which has been characterized fundamentally because these traditional risk factors have been on the rise.
In our country it has not been possible to control these well-known risk factors, such as overweight, obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and smoking. All these situations in our country have been increasing and, therefore, the prevalence of AHT remains on the rise.
To date, there is an electronic platform -sponsored by Armstrong Laboratories, Servier Laboratories and the manufacturer Omron-, which precisely records the risk factors, how the patient feels about his disease, estimates the damage to white organs and helps to know what the medical actions are in the day-to-day consultation.
RICHTA (rihta.org.mx), in turn, has an electronic page that is linked to that of GREHTA (grehta.org), where doctors are invited to register on the platform, which is very simple and friendly, in addition to being step-by-step and can be used by anyone in the health system who works with hypertensive patients. The big but is that it takes more than 15 minutes to complete the registration.
This registry is aimed at health personnel, especially general practitioners, medical specialists and nurses, in addition to all those who are interested in this subject; but also, in a second step, to the population in general, because there is a segment of the population that does not know that they have hypertension.
In this sense, it is very important to make the population more and more aware of the importance of knowing the numbers of AHT, that each person has knowledge and an early diagnosis of this condition.
In Mexico, the prevalence of hypertension has been increasing in our country, based on the latest reports of 2018. Before, “we were at 20%, however, in international studies and in our own study that we recently published the prevalence is 32.6%, which means that one in three Mexicans suffers from hypertension (the chilling figure of 43 million Mexicans). I reiterate: we are above 30%, which means that, out of every 10 Mexicans, three have hypertension, and of those three, there will be two who do not know it, that is, they live with the disease, but they are not aware of it ” , detailed Dr. Silvia Palomo Piñón, nephrologist at the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) and president of GREHTA.
Much of the high prevalence of hypertension in Mexico is the overweight and obesity of the population, in addition to the sedentary lifestyle of modern life. We are as a country with a serious health problem that brings with it many cardiovascular complications, which are the main cause of mortality in our times.
These two diseases lead cardiovascular diseases, which have grown exponentially due to the change in eating habits in the population, in addition to daily sedentary lifestyle, which has greatly favored overweight and obesity, which causes the patient triglycerides, uric acid rise and the so-called metabolic syndrome appears, which favors hypertension.
Let’s get down to work to reverse this worrying situation.
- Now that the president dares to send “to hell” with anyone who questions him about the hiring of Cuban doctors and the purchase of the Cuban Abdala vaccine for use in children between the ages of five and 11, would it be a good thing to ask him when he will his promise to normalize the supply of medicines in the health sector? The bad news is that it will not be in this administration.