Jorge Glas Denounces Discrimination by Ecuadorian Government

The former vice president of Ecuador, Jorge Glas, detained in prison 4 in Quito, wrote a letter to the director of the Oscar Gabela penitentiary center, expressing his rejection of the discrimination he suffers from the Ministry of Public Health, which refuses to allow him to be treated in a public or private hospital for emergency examinations.

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Glas, who has Covid-19, urgently needs to undergo CT scans of his lungs due to the contagion and the various morbidities that affect his health.

"The Ecuadorian state has deliberately prevented medical examinations, just as the directors of the Pablo Arturo Suarez hospital prevented my hospitalization previously despite the joint decision of all the doctors of the hospital itself who recommended it," says part of his letter.

"What happens to my life is your sole responsibility. In my case at least two CT scans are needed, one at the beginning and one at the end to compare the damage of the Covid, even a medical student understands this..."

He clarifies that he is not asking for a transfer to the hospital only that they guarantee the examination he requires in a private center.

After the request, the Ministry of Health and the Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security (IESS) reportedly refused to give him such examinations, so he allegedly arranged for "free" care in a private hospital.

"It turns out that the MSP or the SNAI have ordered to prohibit my transfer for this, probably someone who ignores that I have ankylosing spondylitis and that yesterday I injected Golimumab, medication that, as you know, radically decreases my defenses, endangering my life," he wrote.

Although he recognizes that Gabela would have given permission for the transfer to comply with the medical procedure, he also reiterates that he wants to put on record that his superiors prevented her from doing so.

Veronica Calderon wrote on her Twitter account: "All responsibility will be of @LassoGuillermo if something more serious happens to Comrade @JorgeGlas, so much inhumanity to prohibit him to be treated in a public hospital".

Glas had received a habeas corpus to get out of prison, but the verdict was challenged and the former vice president returned to jail, after a resolution of the Provincial Court of Justice of Santa Elena left without effect the ruling.

Glas has two convictions for corruption-related crimes: six years for illicit association in the Odebrecht corruption scheme and eight years in prison for bribery in the 2012-2016 bribery case.