Given the serious public health problem to which patients are exposed due to the lack of sheets to protect the Civil Protection ambulance stretchers, Mayor Luis Michel Rodríguez promised to look into the situation.
He said, “I’m going to have to see it with the director Gerardo Castillón, because plastic can be washed, but maybe they need sheets. I’m going to check that issue.”
Paramedics from the Puerto Vallarta Civil Protection and Fire Department have to deal every day with the lack of supplies, which puts the patients they provide medical care to at risk of contagion.
They do not have sheets, so they have lined the beds with plastic so that their mattresses do not get contaminated. But that is only the beginning of how public health and safety funds are simply not arriving where they have been allocated by the municipal budget.
Sheets are not the only items missing, but also medical supplies, such as gauze, gloves, and bandages. Many times, it is the paramedics, firefighters, or civil protection personnel themselves who have to face these expenses.
In addition, of the ambulances that are currently providing emergency services, there are only three out of eight in total, because most of them are broken.
(Editor’s note: The mayor is hardly being magnanimous in “checking on” providing sheets. It is my opinion that public health and safety funds are being routinely diverted elsewhere, a situation that puts all Vallartans at risk. It is surprising to me that not one city councilor has called for a full accounting of the health and safety funds, and that the public is not protesting this outrage instead of the verification center. Could it be that both issues are cartel-related and cartel-controlled?)