This is access to health services in prisons in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic- ELESPECTADOR.COM

The complicated scheme with which one contracts in the penitentiary system has led Inpec to notice “shortcomings” in the service. Some doctors and nurses are owed their salaries, and in five prisons there is not a single health professional.

In Villavicencio prison, epicenter of the pandemic of the new coronavirus in prisons, there are 1,773 inmates and 657 confirmed cases of infection -as of yesterday’s court Tuesday- according to figures from the National Penitentiary Institute (Inpec), but in the Health area only Two people work: a nurse and a nursing assistant. Both contracted COVID-19 in recent weeks, with which the inmates of this prison denounce that they went from having precarious medical assistance to not having it. The pandemic has already reached five other establishments and the complicated panorama is replicated in all of them, which with more than 600 infections total 8.2% of the cases of this disease in the country.

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According to data obtained by the NGO Temblores and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Foundation in Colombia (Fescol), Inpec has 512 nurses and nursing assistants throughout the country, to serve the more than 117,000 people deprived of liberty who are in the 132 detention centers that this entity guards. The situation is aggravated in the detention centers that COVID-19 has already reached: La Picota, in Bogotá, reports that it has 13 health professionals; Las Heliconias, in Florencia (Caquetá) with seven; Leticia (Amazonas) with two; Picaleña, in Ibagué, claims to be 15 and La Esperanza in Guaduas (Cundinamarca), 13.

That is, a nurse in a prison, on average, must care for 229 inmates. However, the Inpec failed to reply to these organizations how many health professionals are in the prisons of Mocoa (Putumayo), Titiribí (Antioquia), Roldanillo (Valle), and that of women in Pasto. In addition, the data must be viewed with a magnifying glass because, in some prisons, health personnel are hired only part-time. All this, according to Cam López, spokesman for Temblores, “shows that inside the prisons there are no conditions to treat people with medical complications, which leaves them to their own fate.”

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The issue becomes more complex because, in addition to Inpec, two other entities come into play. In the first place, the Penitentiary and Prison Services Unit (Uspec), which centralizes a large part of the hiring of prisons. This, in turn, subcontracts the Fiduprevisora, to manage the health care resources of all the prisoners in Colombia. Only for the period between December 31, 2019 and May 30 of this year, the Uspec has turned over $ 18,365 million to the trustee, resources that it, in turn, must use to contract the IPS that lend it attention to each jail on the ground.

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The director of Inpec, General Norberto Mujica, pointed out in a document sent to the Secretariat of the House of Representatives on April 30 – which he had access to this newspaper – that in all this process the “shortcomings” have persisted and denounced that Therefore, in five prisons in the country at the moment there is not a single medical professional. “Despite the requirements that the director of the Inpec has made to the director of the Uspec and the Trust Consortium in charge of the provision of health services for the health service since the beginning of the problem, the multiple shortcomings that complicate timely and adequate care persist of the health emergency caused by COVID-19 ”, says the report.

One of the Inpec director’s concerns is that in the Villavicencio prison there is still “no 24-hour assistance service.” As explained to the congressmen in the report, the medical personnel “of the health area of ​​the establishment must be independent of the group that assists inmates diagnosed with COVID-19”. However, to date, “the doctor who is providing his health services does so for eight hours and is exclusively dedicated to filling out all the documentation needed to collect the samples, which implies that all the others health needs generated in the establishment are left unattended. ”

Likewise, in prisons like the one in Zipaquirá (Cundinamarca) there is a delay of 20 days in the payment of wages to medical personnel; in at least 30 prisons they still do not provide protection elements and 53 still do not have digital thermometers. Even General Mujica denounces in the document that “in some cases the items delivered are of poor quality, in others the lack of training and supervision generates misuse.” On the other hand, the two laboratories hired to perform the COVID-19 tests on the inmates, Colcan and Synlab, have reported difficulties in taking the samples in prisons and transporting them to their facilities.

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The Uspec contracted, for $ 288 million, the installation of 30 medicalized tents to isolate and care for inmates who are diagnosed with coronavirus. One of these tents, assured the director of Inpec, will be installed in Villaviencio. Also, this week hired the staff of these. The entity disbursed $ 500 million to buy directly and in the form of an exhaustible amount – basically, what is within the budget – stretchers, digital thermometers, stethoscopes, scales, drums, equipment to take vital signs and other basic elements for care visit to the distributor Suministros y Dotaciones Colombia SA