Petro’s message to the EPS ‘if they want to survive’

President Gustavo Petro sent a message to the EPS, regarding the health reform, in which he told them what they should do if they want to survive in the new system that their government wants to implement.

“The first thing it does is that the EPS is not the institutional axis, but is the Primary Care Center, which can be public or private. In other words, the EPS can, if it wants to survive today in the new system that we propose, begin its survival with Primary Care Centers (CAP)”, he assured this Tuesday at a summit with governors.

(In context: The health reform that generates tension in the Government and the coalition)

Petro met this Tuesday in Bogotá with the country’s governors to present the axes of the health reform that his government is preparing and that he hopes to take to Congress In the next weeks.

The head of state told the regional leaders, who met in the Assembly of the National Federation of Departments, that the new health model, if approved by the Legislature, has as its axes the preventive model and primary care.

(Also read: Health reform: harsh objections from Minister Alejandro Gaviria leak)

He explained, for example, that in the country there are “terrible” indicators in primary care. For example, he said that the infant mortality rate is one of the worst on the continent and 22 percent of children suffer from anemia.

Hence the importance of the transformation of the EPS. He assured, for example, that the Primary Care Centers are not “a care center for people with some medical personnel there, but rather they have to go to the territory.”

“In other words, over time we would have a universal system with primary and preventive care, and the central unit of that would be the CAP, there would be thousands of CAPs,” he added.

The health reform has become a controversial issue, since it is not known and was expected to be discussed in the extraordinary sessions of Congress, which began this week, but the Government did not include it, for now.

In addition, there are divisions in the government coalition regarding the axes of the project. And, even, there is no consensus in the cabinet, being Alejandro Gaviria one of his main critics. “It can do damage, a lot of damage”, The Minister of Education, who led the Health portfolio in the past, exposed his colleagues.

(In other news: Cepeda to Néstor Humberto Martínez: he tries to divert attention with smoke screens)

Precisely, one of the main doubts is about the role of the EPS, since the reform would bring about a transformation of these and, there has even been talk that they could disappear.

However, we will have to wait for the Government to finish drafting the text to find out what the real changes are.

MATTHEW GARCIA

POLITICAL WRITING