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In several states of the country, the lack of oncological drugs has led to litigation, while the patients who are treated at the Breast Cancer Foundation must now pay for their treatment because the Government cut the agreement by dissolving the Seguro Popular. X-ray of the daily struggle of thousands of women with breast cancer in Mexico.
When Mercedes Intzin felt a ball in her right breast, she was alarmed and went to her health center in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. There the doctor told him that it was a simple ball of fat, that “it was his nerves” and that he did not get ideas in his head. Today ‘Meche’, as her friends call her, is a breast cancer survivor after undergoing surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
The wrong diagnosis and the lack of timely care, because when he went to the capital of Chiapas to undergo a mammogram the machine was broken, they caused the tumor to grow rapidly and it was not treated in time.
It was at the Breast Cancer Foundation (Fucam), in Mexico City, where she was finally treated and managed to defeat the cancer. Those were times when the Seguro Popular – coverage provided by the State – paid for all the treatment to the Fucam, so that the beneficiaries should not put it out of their own pocket.
The current federal government, headed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, disappeared the Seguro Popular and created the Institute of Health for Well-being (Insabi). However, the new institute – which has not been exempt from criticism for its lack of operating rules – does not have an agreement with Fucam, as the federal administration chose to cut off all support to NGOs, in its desire to impose an ironclad austerity policy and close any loopholes to corruption.
Now the patients who need care in Fucam – either because the Insabi still does not attend them or because they do not have coverage from the IMSS or the ISSSTE, the two large health institutes for Mexican workers – must pay with their own resources for the treatments and medicines .
“The Seguro Popular stopped working and because at that time many women were affected, it affected me a lot, for me it was sad that they took it away from us because I have to look for it (the money to pay for their care) and sometimes I can’t , because I had chemotherapy and that weakens your bones; It is difficult for me because it is not the same when I was strong, one hundred percent healthy ”, laments Mercedes.
Although ‘Meche’ won the battle against cancer, he must continue with various follow-up studies, for which he must pay. La Fucam supports her with low costs, but she still has to work to raise the money by selling her handicrafts and clothes from Chiapas.
In Mexico 7,800 women died of breast cancer in 2020 and 30,000 new cases were diagnosed in 2020.
The Government ensures that all women with breast cancer will be cared for in public health institutions, such as the Hospital Juárez de México, the Hospital General de México and the National Cancer Institute.
However, the Fucam, despite not having an agreement with the state social security, continues its work of patient care. In 2020, it provided more than 69,000 medical consultations, about 31,000 mammograms, 12,000 radiotherapy treatments and 19,500 chemotherapy treatments, as well as more than 2,100 surgeries.
Medicine shortages, another adversity
In addition to fighting cancer and facing the complications derived from the cut in subsidies, some patients must struggle to obtain cancer drugs, since there is not always a supply of drugs.
In that battle they have been accompanied by lawyers who process pro-bono appeals, in order to guarantee the constitutional right to health.
The lawyer Andrea Rocha has won two final sentences, one of a patient in the municipality of Salina Cruz, in the state of Oaxaca, and another in Salamanca, Guanajuato.
“The most important thing is that we can present the protection immediately because cancer is a disease that does not wait. You cannot tell them ‘Today there is no mammogram because there is no budget,’ “he says.
As well as Rocha, other groups of lawyers have emerged to help patients in their legal fight. An example is the collective Justicia vs. Cancer, who just won a protection for a breast cancer patient in Mexicali, Baja California.
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