Argentina’s Health Ministry announced Wednesday that it would take over the Bonaparte Mental Health Hospital in Buenos Aires. The news came exactly one week after it laid off 40% of its workforce. The government has said it will guarantee patient care, but the hospital’s workers fear the administration is a tacit attempt to shut the facility down.
The ministry said in a statement that the intervention is part of a “restructuring plan” and that the medical center was “over-staffed.” The layoffs come just weeks after President Javier Milei declared that he would take a “deep chainsaw” to the state during his second year in office. The libertarian economist has long used the power tool as a metaphor for his agenda of broad-reaching public-sector cuts.
Last week, 1,400 of the ministry’s employees were fired, including 200 workers at the Bonaparte, which is the only national government-owned public hospital dedicated to addictions. The government had already tried to partially close the hospital last year, but backtracked after widespread protests.
The communiqué said that 326 of its employees were hired during Alberto Fernández’s administration, and that 38 outpatient practices were seeing an average of five patients a day. They added that the hospitalization service had 109 employees and 55 beds, of which an average of just 19 were occupied each month.
The hospital’s workers called the figures “a lie” and said the layoffs “make it impossible to provide care to patients.”
A worker who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation said that the layoffs left the 24-7 hotline, which receives emergency calls from all over the country, with just 20 workers. Many of the remaining staff are afraid of being fired, the worker added.
Others, who likewise asked to speak anonymously, said some areas had been left with no specialists at all. The only pediatric dentist, for example, was among those fired. “They left only two people in pharmacies. A whole hospital! Can you imagine covering the year-round, 24-7 demands of the hospital with two people?” a worker added.
At the health ministry and elsewhere, the layoffs have been characterized by abruptness and insensitivity. Giselle Yodato, an emergency care nurse at the facility, told the Herald last week that she was about to undergo a chemotherapy session for lung cancer when she learned that she’d been made redundant.
At the Human Rights Secretariat, which has also seen mass redundancies, workers said that some learned they had been laid off over New Year when police stationed outside their offices refused to allow them inside.
A spokesperson for the ministry confirmed to the Herald that the man appointed by the government to lead the takeover is Mariano Pirozzo. He was previously the Director of Medical Care at the Baldomero Sommer National Hospital, where 135 people were fired last week.
“Despite the unions’ complaints, we believe that it can function perfectly well with the current staff capacities,” the spokesperson said.
Pirozzo arrived at the hospital on Wednesday afternoon, soon after the communiqué was published, and is set to meet the workers on Thursday.
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