Argentine health minister releases millions of vaccine doses impounded by predecessor

[sandensea]

Argentine Health Minister Ginés González García ordered the release on Friday of a total of 12.4 million doses of vaccines that were held in Customs at the international airport outside Buenos Aires during the last months of the former Mauricio Macri administration.

The minister ordered the release at noon of 4 of 49 shipments of imported vaccines impounded at Pistarini International Airport's TCA customs depot - some 1 million doses.

The remainder, he explained, "will be distributed among all the provinces within the next 15 days."

The vaccines had arrived in Argentina as early as June 5 - but had been impounded because the Macri administration refused to pay import tariffs and customs duties of $11 million on an $83 million purchase.

"That was solved with political will and also with the social, economic and health emergency declaration," he explained - referring to a bill signed by newly-inaugurated President Alberto Fernández on December 21.

The shipments included 2 million doses of measles vaccines, impounded despite a measles outbreak. Some 97 cases have been reported since March - the first in Argentina since 2000.

The minister announced that another 7 million doses were being purchased.

González García, 74, was sworn in as health minister when President Fernández took office on December 10. Macri had demoted the Health Ministry to a sub-cabinet level secretariat in 2018 - the first time the country had been without a Health Ministry since 1980, during the last dictatorship.

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&tab=wT&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pagina12.com.ar%2F239807-comenzo-la-liberacion-de-mas-de-12-millones-de-dosis-de-vacu

Argentine Health Minister Ginés González García (center) during Friday's release of the first million vaccine doses out of a total of 12.4 million impounded since June by the former Macri administration.

The decision to impound the vaccines - apparently taken to help satisfy IMF budget deficit guidelines - came during the country's first measles outbreak in 20 years.

The outbreak in turn took place amid the most severe recession since 2002 - which led to Macri's defeat in elections this October.

"Only an indifferent state could have allowed this to happen," he lamented.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Mind-blowing action against the people of Argentina, by Macri, deliberate neglect.

Health Minister Ginés González García was right to point out the indifference.

Do you think Macri was doing it to cover up how much money had actually been taken from the Treasury by his administration on their way out the door?

20 years since the last outbreak, 40 years since the last dictatorship left the country helpless without a Health Ministry. That says so much about this right-wing, racist ringer for the fascists in the country.
It doesn't seem to take nearly long enough before people become complacent in the absence of a direct threat while fascists are out of office to let them ooze their way back into office again, preceded by an incessant storm of aggressive, all-out propaganda assault during the time they are gone.

In time, the lessons are going to stick, and the destructive hijackings are going to get shorter, as the level of consciousness improves, and it certainly will.

It's very good news for the people, isn't it, to have their interests put back in front, where they belong? Thank you, sandensea.

[sandensea]

2. Macri didn't want to pay the import tariff - when he spent 4 years promoting imports!

And here's the kicker: the fee would've been paid from one federal agency (the Health Secretariat) to another (the AFIP revenue bureau).

So, yes. Of all the incompetence out of the Macri administration, this one has to go down as one of the most pathetic - and baffling.

But this incident also harkens back to the government indifference of another, darker era.

You might recall reading about the massive Chagas disease pandemics of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which afflicted much of South America at the time.

Charles Darwin was believed to have died of Chagas, from his earlier travels in the continent.

Part of the reason it spread so widely, besides the mud-hut poverty conditions so common back then, is that official policy was basically:

"This disease afflicts the poor and brown-skinned, so why on earth should we do anything to stop it?"

So for most of the early 20th century, any efforts to abate the pandemic were mainly financed by civic-minded aristocrats or doctors on their own dime.

Often, these efforts were met with ridicule and hostility by right-wing elites.

Ultimately, the Perón and Vargas administrations (in Argentina and Brazil, respectively) created their countries' first Health ministries in the 1940s, and made Chagas erradication official policy.

Even so, according to the latest data 390 people still die annually of Chagas in Argentina - and 5,351 in Brazil.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Had heard the name of the disease, had no idea how horrendous it is. Poor people are helpless,

if they can't afford adequate housing, as the starting place.

Reading the elitists' cynical attitude was a shock. They are not redeemable. That hatred for suffering people is a sign they couldn't matter less, themselves.

It's a miracle they all haven't been torn limb from limb. They should bless the multitudes they fear and despise for not murdering them while they sleep!

I so appreciate the information you've shared on the subject. It would have taken some intelligent, focused research and considerable time to acquire it through personal research.

It still doesn't seem possible Macri is gone before creating even more pain. He was able to set a record as Argentina's first one term President, and I just read he's also South America's first one term president, as well! Setting records. Hope his friend MacTrump can do as well.

Regarding Chagas, since the disease got so entrenched throughout the Americas due to the shocking racism and classism of the elites and their refusal to invest in addressing the problem until the 1940's, it had a horrendous hold on all the countries. I looked the disease up after seeing your post, and saw that Argentina appears to be so much more cleansed of Chagas it's not even listed now as one of the countries struggling with it any longer. There is a huge contrast there with Brazil. I hadn't known of that battle Perón won. He hasn't been given nearly enough credit for that one.