The call addressed to doctors, nurses, graduates in nutrition and obstetrics
The use of the Italian Hospital of La Plata as the registration center for the next elections of graduates in the Faculty of Medicine caused confusion in the last hours both in university and professional circles. Not only because, as they say, it is an unprecedented action (never, they say, was a padrón made in a private sanatorium), but also because it would combine a series of interests outside university life and that would rather have connection with the total reform of the public and private health system promoted by the highest officials of the Ministry and the Institute of Medical Assistance Work of the Province of Buenos Aires (IOMA).
It is in this framework that the Medicine elections take on special relevance, which (like the rest of the faculties of the National University of La Plata) this year summon professors, students, heads of practical work, graduates and non-teachers to the polls. . The representatives of these cloisters in the board of directors are the ones who must later elect the Dean.
Although the elections will take place within two months, those grouped in the group “La Alternativa”, linked to Kirchnerism, launched an intense campaign that, among other things, included the “privatization” of some tasks of the preparation of the register of graduates who will be able to vote in the election of representatives for the academic council that governs the Faculty.
On the way to this electoral process, which will take place from March, the last Friday called attention to the call to register in the Italian of the group “La Alternativa”, made up of graduates who in 2017 knew how to be part of the intercloister front formed to unseat the historical “Oak Leaf” from the conduction of Medicine. It was the result of that motley unity (which, among others, brought together Peronism, Kirchnerism and the left) that Juan Ángel Basualdo Farjat was able to assume as Dean, a position that he would aspire to renew in these elections. Only that to achieve it now it will have to work on the rearming of a cohesion that in recent years has been dissolving.
It is that on that occasion, as has been said, different sectors agreed that obtained the support of leaders of the College and the Medical Association, who undoubtedly influenced the defeat of “Oak Leaf”. From that alliance of spaces, which these days have deep discrepancies, basically the sectors linked to Kirchnerism and those that coincide with the reform of the health system made up the list called “La Alternativa” (whose student arm is Remediar, which today manages the Faculty student center). That front of medical graduates is, precisely, the one that days ago deployed registration tables in public hospitals and in the presidency of the Italian, which was striking because it is a private health center. The call was not only for doctors, but also extended to nurses, graduates in Nutrition and Obstetrics (see photo).
“You always register where you can and now the director of the Hospital was very kind in letting us register there,” they acknowledged from the Peronist group about Doctor Roberto Martínez, who in addition to presiding over the medical establishment on Avenida 51, is a professor of Internal Medicine in the UNLP and in the past he knew military in “Hoja de Roble”. Now, there are several sources that point to him as the candidate of “The Alternative” to replace Basualdo in the Deanship of 60 and 120.
The leaders of that list did not confirm that version, but they did not deny it either: “There is no talk of lists now. That will be decided in February,” they said.
Dr. Martínez, it will be remembered, played an active role in the recent conflict between the Medical Association and the IOMA for alleged irregularities in the billing of professionals belonging to the Italian Hospital.
Against this background, the elections in Medicine and the presumed candidacy of Martínez for the Deanship of the Faculty appears as a crucial chapter in the debate for the reform of the health system that, as was said, is encouraged by officials of the Ministry and the IOMA . But until now, apparently the groups opposed to the government project in Medicine have not organized any list despite the fact that they hold the leadership of the representative entities of the doctors.