A woman places a message dedicated to the people who died from covid-19, on a mural in Mexico City last Saturday.Sáshenka Gutiérrez / EFE
Mexico is the third country with the most deaths from covid-19 worldwide and ranks fourth in excess of mortality in a global sample that includes a report from the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) commissioned by the World Organization for Health (WHO).
Mexico could have prevented 190,000 deaths during the management of the health crisis due to covid-19 in 2020, according to the experts who have prepared the document.
The losses indicated in the report are not only caused by the pandemic, but also by other diseases that could not be given adequate care during the emergency due to the saturation of the health system to care for patients with coronavirus.
"Mexico has been hit by a single wave that has fluctuated between very high and extreme levels of covid-19 without correcting the policy to control transmission," the specialists in the document bluntly point out.
In the sample of 39 countries, Mexico ranks fourth, only behind Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, in excess mortality with approximately 43% more deaths in 2020 than it would have expected in relation to 2018-2019.
The average for the countries in the sample is 17.3%.
"We estimate that if Mexico had performed as the average country, around 190,000 deaths from all causes would have been avoided in 2020," the report figure does not consider the peak of deaths observed in January 2021. Currently Mexico records 209,338 deaths from coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University.
A figure that the government itself recognized could be higher with more than 300,000 deaths, ahead of Brazil.
The case study that has been submitted to the WHO Independent Pandemic Preparedness and Response Group to analyze how countries have responded to the virus will be published by the Organization in the coming days.
It details the errors that specialists observe in handling the pandemic.
Among them the leadership of the Government, political subordination, the lack of deliberation and collective decision-making in the most difficult moments and the problems that drag public institutions, specifically those of Health.
The Health Council, the highest body in charge of managing the pandemic on paper, was relegated to the background and public health decisions were not monitored or consulted with independent experts.
The response to the pandemic "remained fragmented," says the report, due to a lack of understanding between the central government and some state governments, affected by party lines and political polarization.
"The pandemic response from the outset eroded the credibility of health authorities among relevant stakeholders and led to uncoordinated action across the country," they say.
The report positively values the first steps that the Government took to carry out a communication strategy based on transparency that, as the pandemic has progressed, has had more and more failures.
"As circumstances deteriorated, [we found] a propensity to cover up policy errors and engage in scapegoating, contributing to the noise of communication," says the document that misrepresents incorrect, inconsistent and politicized information.
The specialists also note that to avoid hospital saturation, the authorities encouraged patients to cope with the disease at home and not seek medical attention unless severe symptoms are present.
"This has contributed to high mortality rates, as patients have sought medical attention only when seriously ill and an estimated 58% have died outside the hospital," they point out.
In this sense, it is pointed out that the 61.2% of deaths in excess of 2020 that are not related to the diagnosis of covid-19, are very likely to be directly attributable to the disease, due to the shortage of tests and diagnosis limited.
Among the collateral damages of the management of the virus is the lack of attention to other diseases.
The diagnosis of other diseases was drastically reduced due to a lack of personnel and resources focused on the pandemic.
Detection of heart problems dropped 45%;
that of uterine cancer, 34%;
diabetes, 27% and breast cancer, 20%, according to figures from the Ministry of Health.
The experts consulted by the WHO consider that Mexico faced the pandemic with a “fragmented and weakened” Health System and as one of the countries with the lowest public spending to support the economy and invest in health.
"Despite Mexico's low investment in health relative to GDP, health expenditures continued to fall under the current administration's austerity program, which has included aggressive cuts and layoffs of health workers," they analyze in the report.
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The public health budget has been cut by 26.4%, in real terms, compared to its maximum in 2015. “The current administration began a disorderly and poorly planned restructuring of the National Health System at the time of the pandemic, after that reforms were approved to dismantle the insurance scheme known as Seguro Popular and recentralize health services and resources, ”they detail.
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