SANTIAGO (AP) — Chilean President Gabriel Boric accepted on Tuesday the resignation of the official responsible for managing pediatric emergency beds, amid pressure to remove him due to the controversial death of a nursing baby infected with an aggressive virus respiratory who did not have access to a bed.
The syncytial virus advanced its appearance this year in Chile with the largest outbreak in a decade, which is reflected in a 92.9% occupancy of pediatric intensive care beds with some 1,200 hospitalized minors, according to the authorities.
Boric said that he accepted the resignation of the Undersecretary of Assistance Networks, Fernando Araos, responsible for managing beds, since “responsibilities have to be asserted.”
The removal of Araos was widely requested as a reaction to the death of a two-month-old baby infected with the virus a week ago while waiting to be transferred to Arica, 2,000 kilometers south of the Chilean capital, where the only bed was. hospital available, according to Araos.
The undersecretary assured that, as established in a protocol, a bed was sought in all public and private health facilities and that only the one in Arica was found.
However, over the weekend it was learned that there was a bed available just 114 kilometers from the place where the infant was, in a private health clinic that was not called because it is prohibited from providing services to the State, until the end of next year. due to labor violations. But the ban does not apply in situations of health alert, such as the one experienced by the South American country.
Boric assured that the government will continue working so that everyone who needs a bed for critical use has it because “the next few weeks will be complex.”
The public and private health network has 1,173 pediatric intensive care beds, 58.9% more than at the beginning of the current crisis, when there were 738.
Araos was replaced by the socialist Osvaldo Salgado, a doctor with extensive experience in public service, the president said, leaving at the end of his words without taking any questions.
The opposition and medical leaders have criticized the government because they consider that it acted late in setting up critical beds for children because it was known since the beginning of the years that the virus would be more aggressive. Generally, what happens in the northern hemisphere is often repeated in the southern hemisphere. In October of last year, the United States reported an outbreak of the same virus.
