MEXICO: Health problems in Chiapas
According to the official report prepared by the Pan-American Health Organization at Salazar's behest, 17 of the first 25
dead babies were either prematurely born or had suffered irreversible birth trauma. The other eight infants succumbed to
septic poisoning, suggesting bacterial contamination of the "special care" room on the pediatrics ward. Many of the babies,
the report noted, had been born to adolescent girls, at least one of whom was only 13 when she became pregnant. The
Comitán baby deaths had immediate resonance throughout the nearby Tojolabal Mayan region, a long-standing Zapatista
(EZLN) stronghold. Two hundred women and children stormed the regional hospital in Las Margaritas shouting that
babies died there too. Health care has long been a pertinent issue for the EZLN. The original Zapatista commanders first
won over villages by providing rudimentary health care, and today a string of rustic clinics function, largely with
non-governmental assistance, in the Zapatista autonomous municipalities.
The Zapaista concern for public health sounds like an imitation of the Cuban program. There has been international
indignation over Castro's violation of human rights, but I am still waiting for unbiased reports on Cuba's health system and
public education.
Ronald Hilton - 5/20/03
Poor Chiapas state has been hit by a series of deaths of babies in the Comitan hospital. Six infants died in the first weeks of
January. "More babies will die," forecast Chiapas Governor Pablo Salazar. The region is one of Mexico's poorest, with
some of the worst health indicators. While the national infant mortality rate is about 25 per thousand births, in the
Indigenous regions of Chiapas that number is 63. The epidemic of dead babies prompted Governor Salazar to declare a
statewide "sanitary emergency." Salazar is Chiapas' first ever governor chosen from the ranks of the opposition, and
inherited a crisis-hit state health care system. The long ruling (71 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) left behind
a situation where health workers were owed $390,000, there were no drugs in the rural clinics, and suppliers were
demanding another $390,000. Salazar, who blamed the baby deaths on Secretary of Health Julio Frenk's budget cutbacks
for regional nutritional programs aimed at indigenous communities, sent a team of 12 forensic investigators to Comitán.
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