President Hipolito Mejia said yesterday that the funds needed for ailing state hospitals would be made available
immediately. This comes in reaction to a report in yesterday’s Hoy newspaper that the Pearl F. Ort burns unit at the Dr
Luis Eduardo Aybar Hospital was under threat of closure due to lack of financial support. The paper’s main editorial
column today speaks about these victims of the economic crisis and lists other hospitals, such as Santiago’s Jose Cabral y
Baez, in serious need of resources to keep up with its patients’ demands. “It is a contradiction in terms that when the
country is just about to embark on an advanced social security scheme, public health services should suffer the sort of
degradations that are the completely contrary to real social assistance.” The government must act, concludes the writer,
“to change the ending of this drama”.