The organizers pointed out in the call, the importance of the demands to improve the quality of life of the staff and guarantee a more efficient health system in the country.

Similar protests were carried out in previous months, when groups in the sector expressed their dissatisfaction over the lack of resources, medicines and stability in jobs.

Guatemala managed to resupply and remodel 19 hospitals in just over six months of the current administration, after the government received hospitals and clinics that had been abandoned for 20 or 30 years and a number of unfinished ones, explained the Minister of the sector Joaquín Barnoya.

“Although we went through Covid-19, which gave us the opportunity to improve hospitals, they were completely neglected,” the Minister said. “We have the goal of opening 400 positions during the four years of Government,” he stated recently to the Diario de CentroAmérica. “We want to decentralize the services and change that paradigm of primary, secondary and tertiary level and return it to a network where the patient has follow-ups through the different specialties,” he stated.

Yet another challenge to be overcome, experts consider, by the Minister of Public Health and Social Assistance is the reality that nurses experience daily when providing care.

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