Hey everyone! Today we had the opportunity to visit a former Provincial Minister of Health, Dr. Josefina Medrano. Her lecture was incredibly interesting, especially because of the fact that she had to endure so much criticism through her tenure as a minister. This was because she had been working as the Provincial Minister of Salta (a northern province of Argentina) during the harsh era of COVID. She described to us how she was publicly criticized for her decision making and that she had made an incorrect choice about a particular projection that she had claimed. She was correct the whole time and proved the media wrong. COVID also presented her with difficult decisions that had to be made and in a hasty manner. This also was accompanied by constant media pressure. The challenges that she faced were considerable. Making appropriate expenditure decisions while also needing to manage intersectoral coordination between regions. To add, there was a dramatically increasing deficit of hospital beds and equipment throughout her tenure. Managing these deficiencies ended up being even more of a burden due to COVID. Towards the end of her presentation to us, Dr. Medrano highlighted the lessons learned of the Salta Ministry of Health in the aggregate. For starters, the importance of preparing and anticipating crisis situations in order to get adequate responses along with the best results. To add, teamwork and stressing the importance of taking care of the mental health of healthcare workers were also pointed out. It should also be mentioned that federalism has a crucial impact on healthcare delivery and planning in Argentina. The idea of federalism brings together and bridges centralized governments and regional/provincial governments. Here we can clearly see the bridge that currently operates between the federal overall Ministry of Health and the Provincial Ministries of Health (in this case we are observing the Salta organization). The delivery of healthcare would simply not be possible with the coordination of these entities (Federal and Provincial). For example, during COVID and in order to keep the Salta hospitals still operational through this period, the federal government sent necessary equipment to Salta (and the rest of the provinces) so that they could continue to be as effective as possible. You should also understand that the hospitals in Salta are more primitive and less funded than those in Buenos Aires for example. Therefore, this partnership (illuminating the idea of federalism) is incredibly necessary for the delivery and planning of healthcare. To add, telecommunications systems have also recently been implemented for planning purposes which is a result of, yet again, the advanced partnership the Ministry of Health has with its affiliate provincial Ministries.  

After our lecture from Dr. Medrano, we visited the main public hospital of Buenos Aires called Hospital Fernandez. We got an excellent, up close and personal tour of this hospital. I honestly did feel like we were invading the privacy of some of the patients, but we were basically told that the culture here is different and people are more welcoming to things like random people walking around and seeing others in the intensive care unit with open doors. Afterwards, we got a walking tour of the city, which was so cool because our last stop was at the cemetery which had so many beautiful structures and statues.