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Argentines Question Vote During Outbreak
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: July 1, 2009
New York Times online
[photo of people wearing loose-fitting surgical masks] Natacha Pisarenko/Associated Press
As people waited at a polling place in Buenos Aires to vote in Argentina?s congressional elections on Sunday, some wore masks as a precaution against swine flu.
S?O PAULO, Brazil ? As Argentina struggled Wednesday to control a fast-spreading outbreak of swine flu, some health officials criticized the government?s decision to go ahead with national congressional elections last weekend.
The officials said they had wanted to declare a state of emergency last week and delay the elections as part of a move to stop public gatherings and to shift the country?s attention to the epidemic. Several of the officials, including some who advised the government on the outbreak, said publicly that the country?s former health minister, Graciela Oca?a, who resigned on Monday, had recommended postponing the vote.
With at least 43 fatalities, Argentina surged into third place in the world for swine flu deaths this week, passing Canada and now trailing only the United States and Mexico.
Health officials complained that the country had paid too little attention to the growing threat and started the epidemic with a relatively small supply of antiviral drugs and too few ventilators for seriously ill patients. The country has at least 1,580 confirmed cases of the illness.
Brazil and Chile, whose epidemics started at roughly the same time, have had only one and 14 deaths, respectively, according to the countries? health ministries.
The health officials said the worsening situation in Argentina, where the Southern Hemisphere winter is taking hold, serves as a warning about the potential for swine flu to spread quickly with colder temperatures and about a lack of careful planning.
?We are facing a grave problem here,? said Dr. Jorge Yabkowski, the president of the Federation of Health Professionals of Argentina. ?Hospitals here have very limited capacity to deal with this epidemic.?
On Wednesday, emergency rooms that normally receive 200 patients had to attend to 1,000, and in Buenos Aires Province the minister of health, Claudio Zin, said about 40 percent of health care workers were not showing up, either because they were ill or were concerned about catching the virus. The province had called up retired doctors and medical students to help out.
Late Wednesday, Ms. Oca?a?s successor, Dr. Juan Manzur, 40, said in a statement that the government would free up more than $260 million to combat the flu and said that the government would close all schools and universities around the country starting Monday.
Argentina?s Health Ministry declined repeated requests on Wednesday to discuss the epidemic.
The election was considered critical to buoying flagging support for President Cristina Fern?ndez de Kirchner and her husband, former President N?stor Kirchner. Mr. Kirchner ran for Congress in Buenos Aires Province, a move considered vital in shoring up backing for the Kirchners? party ahead of the 2011 presidential election, in which one of them was expected to run. Mr. Kirchner failed to finish first in the election, a serious blow to the pair?s political future.
Ms. Oca?a could not be reached on Wednesday to confirm if she had asked that the election be delayed. A secretary in the press office at the presidential palace said Wednesday night that no press officer was immediately available to comment on health officials? criticisms of the government?s decision to go ahead with the vote.
On Sunday, election workers wore surgical masks while voters waited in long lines in the cold.
The Kirchner government did not delay the vote because that would have required ?a political decision? that was never made, Dr. Jorge San Juan, an infectious disease specialist at Hospital Mu?iz in Buenos Aires and a coordinator of the emergency health committee, said Tuesday on the radio.
His assertions were backed up by Dr. Hugo Amor, president of the Association of Health Professionals in Buenos Aires Province.
?We asked last week for the country to declare a national state of emergency, but for political reasons this was not done,? Dr. Amor said in an interview on Wednesday. ?That may have been a costly decision.?
The latest deaths included a boy and three other children from the same school and a 37-year-old nurse from a hospital in Berazategui, on the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires.
Dr. Jarbas Barbosa da Silva Jr., chief of disease control for the Pan American Health Organization, said doctors needed to be told that patients with serious symptoms needed to be put on Tamiflu within the first 48 hours.
But Argentina, with a population of 40 million, has a stockpile of just 2.25 million courses of antiviral drugs, mostly Tamiflu, and some doctors say distribution has been a serious problem. The United States, with a population some seven times larger, had 50 million courses of treatment in its Strategic National Stockpile when the pandemic began.
Dr. Yabkowski and others said that Chile had been administering Tamiflu in all suspected cases to contain the virus, one reason that Chile may be experiencing fewer deaths. In Argentina, there was not enough of the drug to do that, he said.
Argentina reported its first confirmed case of swine flu on May 7, an Argentine tourist who returned from Mexico in April.
Alexei Barrionuevo reported from S?o Paulo, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Charles Newbery contributed reporting from Buenos Aires, and Mery Galanternick from Rio de Janeiro.
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: July 1, 2009
New York Times online
[photo of people wearing loose-fitting surgical masks] Natacha Pisarenko/Associated Press
As people waited at a polling place in Buenos Aires to vote in Argentina?s congressional elections on Sunday, some wore masks as a precaution against swine flu.
S?O PAULO, Brazil ? As Argentina struggled Wednesday to control a fast-spreading outbreak of swine flu, some health officials criticized the government?s decision to go ahead with national congressional elections last weekend.
The officials said they had wanted to declare a state of emergency last week and delay the elections as part of a move to stop public gatherings and to shift the country?s attention to the epidemic. Several of the officials, including some who advised the government on the outbreak, said publicly that the country?s former health minister, Graciela Oca?a, who resigned on Monday, had recommended postponing the vote.
With at least 43 fatalities, Argentina surged into third place in the world for swine flu deaths this week, passing Canada and now trailing only the United States and Mexico.
Health officials complained that the country had paid too little attention to the growing threat and started the epidemic with a relatively small supply of antiviral drugs and too few ventilators for seriously ill patients. The country has at least 1,580 confirmed cases of the illness.
Brazil and Chile, whose epidemics started at roughly the same time, have had only one and 14 deaths, respectively, according to the countries? health ministries.
The health officials said the worsening situation in Argentina, where the Southern Hemisphere winter is taking hold, serves as a warning about the potential for swine flu to spread quickly with colder temperatures and about a lack of careful planning.
?We are facing a grave problem here,? said Dr. Jorge Yabkowski, the president of the Federation of Health Professionals of Argentina. ?Hospitals here have very limited capacity to deal with this epidemic.?
On Wednesday, emergency rooms that normally receive 200 patients had to attend to 1,000, and in Buenos Aires Province the minister of health, Claudio Zin, said about 40 percent of health care workers were not showing up, either because they were ill or were concerned about catching the virus. The province had called up retired doctors and medical students to help out.
Late Wednesday, Ms. Oca?a?s successor, Dr. Juan Manzur, 40, said in a statement that the government would free up more than $260 million to combat the flu and said that the government would close all schools and universities around the country starting Monday.
Argentina?s Health Ministry declined repeated requests on Wednesday to discuss the epidemic.
The election was considered critical to buoying flagging support for President Cristina Fern?ndez de Kirchner and her husband, former President N?stor Kirchner. Mr. Kirchner ran for Congress in Buenos Aires Province, a move considered vital in shoring up backing for the Kirchners? party ahead of the 2011 presidential election, in which one of them was expected to run. Mr. Kirchner failed to finish first in the election, a serious blow to the pair?s political future.
Ms. Oca?a could not be reached on Wednesday to confirm if she had asked that the election be delayed. A secretary in the press office at the presidential palace said Wednesday night that no press officer was immediately available to comment on health officials? criticisms of the government?s decision to go ahead with the vote.
On Sunday, election workers wore surgical masks while voters waited in long lines in the cold.
The Kirchner government did not delay the vote because that would have required ?a political decision? that was never made, Dr. Jorge San Juan, an infectious disease specialist at Hospital Mu?iz in Buenos Aires and a coordinator of the emergency health committee, said Tuesday on the radio.
His assertions were backed up by Dr. Hugo Amor, president of the Association of Health Professionals in Buenos Aires Province.
?We asked last week for the country to declare a national state of emergency, but for political reasons this was not done,? Dr. Amor said in an interview on Wednesday. ?That may have been a costly decision.?
The latest deaths included a boy and three other children from the same school and a 37-year-old nurse from a hospital in Berazategui, on the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires.
Dr. Jarbas Barbosa da Silva Jr., chief of disease control for the Pan American Health Organization, said doctors needed to be told that patients with serious symptoms needed to be put on Tamiflu within the first 48 hours.
But Argentina, with a population of 40 million, has a stockpile of just 2.25 million courses of antiviral drugs, mostly Tamiflu, and some doctors say distribution has been a serious problem. The United States, with a population some seven times larger, had 50 million courses of treatment in its Strategic National Stockpile when the pandemic began.
Dr. Yabkowski and others said that Chile had been administering Tamiflu in all suspected cases to contain the virus, one reason that Chile may be experiencing fewer deaths. In Argentina, there was not enough of the drug to do that, he said.
Argentina reported its first confirmed case of swine flu on May 7, an Argentine tourist who returned from Mexico in April.
Alexei Barrionuevo reported from S?o Paulo, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Charles Newbery contributed reporting from Buenos Aires, and Mery Galanternick from Rio de Janeiro.
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