The Seremi de Salud, Carolina Torres, and the director of the Health Service, Jaime Gutiérrez, addressed both problems with El Tipografo.
Influenza vaccination for this winter appears in global terms with good figures compared to the rest of the country, but insufficient to guarantee the expected coverage in risk groups. This is the challenge that Seremi de Salud has for the next few days. Meanwhile, the O’Higgins Health Service is dealing with 130 thousand “pending” hours of medical specialty consultations and surgeries. They are the dreaded waiting lists in public health. El Typographer spoke about this with the Seremi de Salud, Carolina Torres, and the director of the SS-O’Higgins, Jaime Gutiérrez.
“Our region today is in second place nationally regarding vaccination coverage. However, we still have a number of people to be vaccinated in specific groups and it is extremely important to remind citizens that this vaccination is intended for the highest risk groups, adults over 60 years of age; schoolchildren who can be a factor that causes the infection to spread if they get sick, so that is why it is important that they get vaccinated. Added to this are people who have some immunosuppression; pregnant women, who are sometimes a little reluctant to get vaccinated. That’s what the emphasis is on. All the operations that are being carried out and all the efforts are aimed at complying with the 85% to achieve herd immunity. Today we are at 77.3%, but as I say that does not give peace of mind because for the campaign to be successful we should reach 85 in each risk group,” says Seremi Torres.
Regarding risk communication, Torres pointed out that “the vaccination campaign was quite explicit. When we held the inauguration we explained that the vaccine does not bother, it does not hurt, compared to what it means to lose a loved one. In other words, the message was that influenza kills and we forget that influenza kills. Influenza has the risk of becoming complicated in older adults, for example, and complicating it with pneumonia and ending up losing the person’s life.
Finally, the seremi clarified that “the increase in viral circulation due to influenza “A” virus has been exponential in recent weeks, but we have sufficient stock of vaccines in the region. Respiratory diseases are reaching a peak and we must remember that the vaccine is not the only tool we have. There is the use of a mask; hand washing and everything we learned in covid that we should apply today.”
The waiting lists
After the scandal over the disappearance of lists of thousands of people in the Metropolitan Region, a registry of hospitals throughout the country has been initiated by the Comptroller’s Office, which has been ongoing since May. O’Higgins has the Franco Ravera hospital in that condition of analysis. Now, on waiting lists, the situation is worrying due to the thousands of pending services in the region.
The director of the O’Higgins Health Service Jaime Gutierrez points out that “we have a waiting list that is a national issue. We have a waiting list for both specialty consultations (100,000) and surgery (30,000), but we have been making progress. We have been implementing strategies that allow us to reduce those waiting lists where some are associated and we are also reducing waiting times. There are two factors: one is the number of people and the other is the time expected for both consultation and surgical resolution. Today it is focused on the Regional Hospital, which is the leading health center in the region. There are specific plans with a new director who has somehow arrived to improve the hospital management area where we hope to focus on priority health issues for the population. There are different strategies such as weekend operations; The use of the pavilion is being optimized and some public-private associations are also being made that allow us to increase our resolution capacity, that is, we are going to be working to reduce it. That is what we are working on.”
