Continuing with his now regular unannounced visits, President Danilo Medina visited the Luis Eduardo Aybar (El Morgan) public hospital in Santo Domingo earlier this week to see the conditions there for himself. Following the visit he announced that the hospital would be expanded and remodeled and ordered improvements to the equipment. He expressed his concern when he saw five women who had just given birth sharing a bed. “This is a hospital that is operating in subhuman conditions, and needs to be transformed to serve the poor people of this area, and that is what we are going to do,” said the President. He said that the Supervisory Office of Public Works of the Presidency (OISOE) would be in charge of the project.
Meanwhile, during the visit Minister of Public Health Freddy Hidalgo Nunez said that one of the greater challenges during his term would be to get the public involved in health topics, as reported in El Dia. Hidalgo wants to implement preventive medicine programs. He said that society needed to be empowered, saying that their aim was to create a preventive and healthy culture among the population. He commented that next year’s government literacy campaign would have positive repercussions for the health of the Dominican people.