La Paz, March 6 (EFE) .- The president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, inaugurated this Sunday the first nuclear medicine and radiotherapy center so that Bolivians can treat diseases such as cancer in the country and do not have to go to neighboring countries for treatment.
The center is located in the city of El Alto, which this day is celebrating its 37th anniversary, and was inaugurated by Arce who was accompanied by Vice President David Choquehuanca and other ministers.
“With this center there will no longer be a need for us to go to Brazil, Argentina, Chile or other countries to perform treatments,” Arce said in his opening speech.
Arce stressed that Bolivia is taking a “qualitative leap” due to the technology that this center has in which cancer will be treated, a disease that the president suffered in 2017 and that he went to Brazil to be treated.
“This technology that we are inaugurating here, in one of the highest cities on the planet, is the best technology in South American countries,” Arce said.
The president also emphasized that this center is part of a “network” and that a similar one will be built in eastern Santa Cruz, they also see the possibility that drugs can also be produced.
This center has high-tech scanners that use nuclear energy to accurately detect cancer through images, it also has two linear accelerators, a brachytherapy area, another for chemotherapy, a simulation scanner and a pharmacy, according to data from the Bolivian Agency for Nuclear Energy (ABEN) cited by the Ministry of Health.
This center located in the Parcopata neighborhood in El Alto will have the capacity to care for 120 cancer patients in one day and it is estimated that it will receive at least 36,000 cares per year, and has an investment of 49.1 million dollars.
The Argentine state INVAP was in 2017 the successful bidder for the construction of three nuclear medicine centers in the Bolivian cities of La Paz, El Alto and Santa Cruz, with an investment of some 165 million dollars.
(c) EFE Agency