The lives of 36 kidney transplant patients and with lupus disease are at risk, given that the Venezuelan Institute of Social Security (IVSS) has not sent shipments of medicines to the Dr. Patrocinio Peñuela Ruiz Hospital located in San Cristobal, in the last three months.
Anggy Polanco // La Patilla Correspondent
Patients from various Municipalities of Táchira and Apure States travel to the healthcare center every month in search of the drugs that keep them alive, but in recent months they have lost the trip there because the drugs have not been dispatched from Caracas for unclear reasons.
Tomas Eduardo Benavides, who received a kidney transplant nine years ago, explained that he has not received his medications through Social Security for three months, so his life depends on it.
“We can lose our organ and our life,” said Benavides, who received an organ donated by his brother and four years ago was already at risk of losing it also due to failures in the dispatch of the required medicines, which is why he asked the authorities to their hands to their hearts before this situation.
Jorge Enrique Romero, said that he has been a transplant patient for 8 years, and now he is very concerned about the lack of anti-rejection medicines.
“I would like, and I would not like, that an official who has to authorize the dispatch of medications for all of us transplant recipients, had a family member suffering among us, because this is fatal, we cannot stop taking immunosuppressants,” said Jorge Enrique.
The patients explained that they are unable to purchase anti-rejection medications in private pharmacies.
For this reason, this Friday they went to the healthcare center to ask the director of the institution to help them promote the shipment of the necessary medicines, however, the director of the IVSS in San Cristóbal told them that the shipment depends on Caracas and that the Hospital Dr. Patrocinio Peñuela Ruiz only takes care of protecting and delivering the drugs.