Federal health authorities have blamed their failure to meet healthcare targets in the first half of the year on a delay in funding from the Secretariat of Finance (SHCP).

The Secretariat of Health said it didn’t achieve its goals in attending to the medical needs of highly marginalized sectors of the population due to a shortfall of resources.

Health authorities lacked funds to detect high-risk pregnancies, carry out pap tests and implement preventative measures against contagious diseases and chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure.

All told, healthcare targets weren’t met in half a dozen different areas in the first six months of 2019 due to “the delay in the authorization of resources” by the finance department, the Secretariat of Health said in a report sent to Congress.

The department also said that funding delays meant that no medications and medical supplies were purchased in the first half of the year for healthcare facilities in towns with populations lower than 2,500.

In addition, no new personnel were hired to work in mobile medical units that provide healthcare in the country’s most remote areas.

The federal government has come under fire this year for cutting health budgets and withholding funding, a situation that state officials said caused shortages of doctors, nurses and medicine in hospitals in at least 24 states.

Germán Martínez resigned in May as the chief of the Mexican Social Security Institute, a large public health care provider, citing budget and staffing cuts at the agency and other “pernicious interference” by the SHCP.

However, President López Obrador denied on May 23 that funding to the health sector had been cut or withheld, and blamed the previous government for “looting” the public healthcare system and leaving it in “crisis.”

Source: Milenio (sp)