Guatemala Health Minister Resigns over Ongoing Crisis

One of the worst crises in Guatemala’s public health system has forced Health Minister Alfonso Cabrera to resign just seven months after being appointed to the post by President Jimmy Morales.

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Cabrera signed his letter of resignation Tuesday, according to his spokesperson Edgar Arana, and is waiting for Morales to accept. Arana reported that Cabrera cited personal motivations for his resignation in the letter, but the minister said in Congress last week that he was planning to step down if the health system crisis could not be resolved.

The resignation will be effective Aug. 1. In the meantime, Cabrera has traveled to Paraguay to participate in a regional meeting on health and agriculture.

Structural problems plaguing the health system sparked outrage last year when a wave of public fraud scandals came to light, including a health care corruption case involving US$14.5 million in irregularities in medical service contracts in the country’s Social Security Institute.

Corruption in the Social Security Institute was one in a series that included a customs fraud ring in the tax authority headed by the highest levels of government, fueling months of massive protests that eventually resulted in the resignations of former Vice President Roxana Baldetti and former President Otto Perez Molina.

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In the wake of Perez Molina’s resignation last September, Guatemala’s Public Health and Social Assistance Chief Mariano Rayo said in November that the health system was in a situation of “absolute disaster” and that the country’s hospitals are in a “pathetic state.”

Cabrera’s resignation also comes amid repeated protests over the ailing health system. Health worker labor unions have blocked highways in various parts of the country and streets in Guatemala City to protest the crisis in some 44 hospitals, especially the problems with shortages of medicine and other supplies.

President Jimmy Morales entered office on January 14 with a Cabinet of 14 ministers.