Development & Aid, Headlines, Health, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

HEALTH-MEXICO: Shunned Abroad, Negligence at Home

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, May 7 2009 (IPS) - The Mexican government is complaining about measures taken by other countries to protect themselves against possible contagion from the new H1N1 flu virus, which is widely seen as having originated in Mexico. But some Mexicans complain about stigma at home, as well as medical negligence.

Mexico has been loudly protesting the treatment received by Mexicans abroad since this country declared a health emergency on Apr. 23 because of the new influenza virus, popularly known as “swine flu”, of which there were 1,204 laboratory-confirmed cases in Mexico by Thursday, 44 of which were fatal, according to official figures.

Argentina, Cuba, China, Ecuador and Peru suspended all direct flights from Mexico, and several Mexican travelers have complained about the treatment they received in China and other countries.

But mistreatment has not only been received abroad. In towns near the Mexican capital, where most of the flu cases have been reported, stones have been thrown at cars with Mexico City licence plates.

Meanwhile, patients and their families have complained that they have been turned away from hospitals or have received inadequate, hostile treatment.

One such case would appear to be that of Blanca Esther Muñoz, 39, who reportedly died of influenza on Apr. 29 in the city of Tlaxcala, north of the capital, two days after giving birth to a premature baby. Although she felt sick before the birth, the doctors did not detect that she had the flu.

In their hometown of Papalotla, not far from Tlaxcala, Muñoz’s family complained that they have been shunned by their neighbours, and that they suffer discriminatory treatment when they visit the baby at the hospital.

According to her death certificate, Muñoz died of septic shock and pneumonia.

Her family members say the doctors never told them she had influenza, as health authorities now claim, and they say no one has checked the health of those who were by her side, holding her hand and kissing her.

The protocol for dealing with an epidemic includes identifying those who were in contact with the infected person, in order to prevent new outbreaks. This is especially crucial in the case of influenza, which spreads easily from person to person through breathing, coughing and sneezing.

The doctors say Muñoz’s baby daughter does not have the flu. She is in a special ward at the Tlaxcala Hospital of Gynecology and Obstetrics, because she requires special care, like any premature infant.

The baby is “a source of infection; I wish they would take her out of here,” a woman named Lilian, who did not want to give her last name, told IPS.

“Her mother died of influenza, so she’s a source of infection, right?” Lilian said by cell-phone from outside the hospital, to which her sister was admitted. “Influenza can be tricky; that’s why I think the baby should go to another hospital.”

A few kilometres to the south, at the Mexico City airport, the wife of President Felipe Calderón, Margarita Zavala, gave a hero’s welcome Wednesday to 136 Mexicans who returned on a government-chartered jet, after they were quarantined in hotels and hospitals in China even though they did not have any symptoms of the flu.

Fernando Cano, the secretary of the Institute of Respiratory Disease, a government body, told IPS that several of the influenza deaths in the last few weeks might be related to delays in receiving treatment or to substandard medical care.

Besides the 44 confirmed deaths caused by the H1N1 virus, 77 other people have died of similar symptoms in Mexico since late April. However, it is impossible to determine what killed them, because tissue and fluid samples were not taken before their bodies were buried or cremated.

Among the hundreds of Mexicans who have gone to hospitals fearing they had flu symptoms, there have been a number of complaints of poor treatment.

Four-year-old María Fernanda Meza died after her parents took her to two health centres in the capital.

Her parents say they took her in for treatment in a timely manner, but that she was sent home twice with anti-fever medication. One doctor even said she was feeling poorly because of a broken bone in her leg. The little girl died at home, of respiratory failure.

Gustavo Terán, 25, went to a Mexican Social Security Institute hospital with typical flu symptoms: fever, a runny nose, a very sore throat and general body ache. He was diagnosed with HIV, although it was later confirmed that he had the flu.

“They didn’t treat me for the flu because I didn’t have all the symptoms,” a woman who did not give her name told a local radio station. “I went to two hospitals and they sent me home with anti-viral medication. I’m ok now, but I never found out in the end whether I had influenza.”

There are those who blame the shortcomings in care given to some patients and some of the alleged medical errors on Mexico’s decentralised health care system.

Each of the 32 states in this country of 106 million people has its own health authorities that depend on the state governments.

Mexico accounts for 44 of the 46 confirmed deaths caused by the H1N1 virus, of which there are a total of 2,371 cases in 24 countries, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The reason for that may be linked to “the negligence of some governors, who preferred not to report (cases) for their own reasons, thus delaying the necessary federal response,” said Luis Rubio, director of the Centro de Investigación para el Desarrollo (CIDAC – Development Research Centre), a non-profit think tank in Mexico City.