Twin tragedy evidences persistent crisis in the Health and Social Security System of the Teachers in Coahuila
Tragedy strikes twins in Coahuila hospital, exposing systemic flaws in healthcare, justice, and urgent need for reform.
The tragedy of the twins Danae and Adán at the Saltillo Teaching Hospital Clinic on December 23, 2023, highlighted the persistent anomalies of the Health and Social Security System for Education Workers in Coahuila. Despite efforts to resume dialogue between the government and teachers to improve the situation, as evidenced in the investigative report published on November 22, 2023, fundamental deficiencies persist, with severe consequences for beneficiaries. The lack of legal action against former officials and the continued shortage of medications, especially for serious illnesses such as cancer, continue to affect the right to health of thousands of education workers. Although the state government conducts investigations and resumed dialogue tables with the teachers’ organization, the search for comprehensive and decisive solutions remains urgent to end this severe crisis.
They resume investigations into deviations in the Health and Social Security System of Education Workers of Coahuila and reactivate dialogue tables to improve it. But underlying anomalies persist, a lack of legal action against former officials and severe damage to the right to health, with the death of two babies and a continued shortage of medications for cancer and other conditions.
By Esmeralda Sánchez/ Border News
In the early hours of Saturday, December 23, 2023, Cinthia Araceli Ríos Escareño, a social worker at Jesús Alejandro Torres De La Rosa Secondary School, took her children Danae and Adán, 27 days old, to the Saltillo Teaching Hospital Clinic, Her babies had been treated three days earlier in the same hospital, where they were diagnosed with the common cold. Hours later, the twins would die in circumstances that, she claims, are filled with negligence and a lack of elements for adequate care.
Araceli works the evening shift at this school, which is attached to Section 38 of the National Union of Education Workers in Coahuila. She had given birth to her twins prematurely on November 25, and despite being born at 34 weeks, the children were born in good health.
Before what happened, on December 20, the afternoon pediatrician at the Clinic (4:30 p.m.) informed her that the child had a heart murmur and confirmed the cold, for which she prescribed antifludex; She asked him to go to the archive to make an appointment with the cardio pediatrician, where they informed him that there were no consultations until January 2024.
As the first pediatrician established the emergency, her mother went to the Medical Directorate, where she received instructions to return the next day (Thursday, December 21) with paperwork to providing the service. Araceli arrived at 8:00 a.m., and the hospital director told her that a cardiologist could treat her son at the Clinic and give consultations on Fridays, so she returned the next day at the same time.
The archive staff informed him that although the cardiologist was due to arrive on vacation that day, he had not attended work, so they asked him to return until the following week. Still, Araceli decided to stay and wait for another pediatrician, who finally treated her and refuted the diagnosis of her son's heart murmur, in addition to informing her that antifludex caused the children to be depressed, so she changed their medication.
As a result of the first medicine, the babies remained sleepy all the days already mentioned, and at 3:30 in the morning on Saturday, Araceli and her husband got up to try to feed them. Still, they only managed to do so with the child, and the girl did not respond. When trying to give her the bottle, her parents realized that she was not breathing, so they immediately went to the Clinic, where they arrived in about seven minutes. On the way, they tried to revive her with slaps on the chest.
Upon arrival, the three emergency room doors were closed, when they were finally able to enter they realized that the staff was asleep and they informed one of the nurses about the girl's situation. Araceli narrates: “He didn't even grab her, and he tells us she is already dead. As we continued patting her on the back, at that moment, the girl threw milk, and then he took her to the stretcher. The doctor came out, and they started to resuscitate her; my daughter reacted; she gained color, and she was crying. I made all the observations to the doctor, and she told me to bring the other baby, who was in the same condition as the girl."
In 20 minutes, Adan arrived. He was given oxygen tips and a helmet and left alone on a stretcher. Araceli remembers: “I don't know what happened; they never told me anything.” They were waiting for the pediatrician on call, who was at her house and did not answer. The emergency doctor then determined to move them somewhere else because there were no conditions to care for them: “There was no incubator. They had them on a normal stretcher, uncovered.”
Chaos prevailed because, from one moment to the next, they proceeded to intubate the child, which took a few minutes since they did not have material in the emergency room. Araceli continues narrating: “At around six in the morning, the pediatrician arrived, assessed the child, and came out to tell me that he had only a few hours to live. I couldn't explain why.” Aracely and her son went to the University Hospital, where they arrived at 6:45, but five minutes later, Adan died.
Meanwhile, his sister remained on a stretcher, waiting for admission. “The staff at the University Hospital did not receive us; they told us that there was no agreement, who had we notified that we were going to arrive, that the pediatrician was busy, and that they could not care for us. They took my daughter to pediatrics an hour after we arrived because her saturation was already going down,” Araceli recalls.
At 11:40 in the morning, the staff informed her that they had intubated Danae, so she continued the procedures to dispose of his son's body, but the nightmare was about to become even worse: around 1:30, they called her from the hospital to say that the girl had many complications, that it was influenza or a COVID that she contracted in previous days, that she had four respiratory arrests, she came out of three, but they couldn't get her out of the last one.”
When asked what happened, the neonatologist told Aracely about a potential misdiagnosis and a possibility that the medication they received could have been inappropriate, says Araceli.
Government and teachers resume dialogue
On November 22, 2023, a month before the twins' death, the investigative report “State authorities of Coahuila' freeze' solutions to the teacher crisis” was published. It details the causes of the economic crisis that the state teachers' health and social security system suffers, as well as the severe consequences for the more than 45 thousand beneficiaries and affiliated workers.
Shortly before, the Coalition of Education Workers, a civil organization representing the affected teachers, began talks with the elected government to resume dialogue tables that had started in previous administrations but had not achieved a solution.
On January 1, 2024, teachers first met with the current administration headed by Manolo Jiménez Salinas, represented by the Secretary of Government, Óscar Pimentel González.
“The most serious, urgent cases are being attended to,” Pimentel said, mentioning work with a Section 38 teachers’ team appointed at the time by Professor Isela Licerio (General Secretary of Section 38 of the SNTE) to develop a proposal to improve the Institute of the Medical Service of the Teachers. “That is what we are working on,” said Pimentel.
The state government, employer of the majority of those affected, owed 2,654 million 182,037 pesos until November 2023. Pimentel said the idea was to finalize a payment plan for this and the other debtor employers: “We hope so, because both the universities and the State Government still have some debts with the institute, we need a way to cover them, to allow us to strengthen the medical service.”
For the state official, this must be the primary objective: improving the institute's administration to provide better care services to the teachers' unions "and, of course, also to provide the necessary medicines and treatments."
He said that the idea of the dialogue tables is to collect the proposals that exist to improve the Medical Service, for which, he admitted, "there is no fatal date yet, but what I can tell you is that it is urgent," he indicated that This includes talking to the other employers and establishing the way “in which we must all cover the institute's debts.”
After several meetings, little progress
According to the latest statement of progress issued by the Coalition of Education Workers on February 28 this year, there have been six meetings, four with Pimentel González and two with the Technical Undersecretary Felipe Flor. Among the agreements is the formation of a Working Group in which officials from the Ministry of Health and the Medical Service Institute, representatives of the Coalition, and the four unions bring together workers from the Ministry of Public Education of Coahuila and of the public universities: Section 38 of the SNTE, the Workers' Union of the Autonomous University of Coahuila (STUAC), and the Sole and Administrative unions of the Antonio Narro Autonomous Agrarian University (SUTAUAAAN and SUTUAAAN).
The objective “is to define all situations that affect the generation of current conditions, integrating into the corresponding analysis and diagnosis all aspects of a financial, technical-medical, administrative, labor and regulatory nature, to propose institutional decisions and actions that solve the prevailing problems in the health system of the state teachers.”
Meanwhile, the government established an emerging medical care plan, in which the director of the Medical Service, Alejandro Treviño, participated and followed up on 84 cases that required urgent attention in different regions of the state related to surgeries, procedures ( chemotherapies, catheterization, and endoscopies), studies, specialized consultation, and medication.
According to the press release, the government solved 49 cases, eight are in the process of being resolved, and 27 are under review. The Coalition accepts that this “constitutes an emerging measure in addressing the problems that prevail, the structural and underlying problem persists, the shortcomings and deficiencies continue to occur day by day, affecting the beneficiaries and their beneficiaries,” according to the statement.
There is a lack of economic resources, bureaucratization, and inefficient administrative processes, among other things. For this reason, we continue to insist “on the urgent need to define, NOW, a comprehensive and decisive solution plan that will end this serious crisis.”
The parties established a Comprehensive Solution Table, in which, in addition to the general diagnosis of the deficiencies, they agreed for the government to carry out a diagnosis with a detailed and technical description of the shortcomings in terms of infrastructure, facilities, specialized equipment, materials, utensils, in all the areas.
Delay situations persist
Professor Gustavo García Torres, a member of the Coalition, explains that although there has been progress in care, some situations of delay persist, as is the case of teacher Patricia Alanís, a worker at the Ministry of Education who has published several videos on the networks in which he states that his cancer treatment has not arrived on time on more than one occasion.
The last time was the week before, and although the medication arrived, “unfortunately, at the moment, it has not been applied in his chemotherapy procedure because it was over the weekend, and there is no staff to apply it. They tell him until Monday.”
Salvador Ponce Ortiz, another member of the Coalition, highlighted that “very little progress has been made” in the underlying solution and only “some aspects of the Medical Service are under review; The other aspects that have to do with pensions, housing, and teacher insurance that haven’t received attention; However, there is confidence about substantive progress.”
The investigations are just beginning after years of complaints.
Another of the delayed aspects is the administration of justice since the report above reports 43 complaints filed from 2015 to date against officials of the Medical Service Institute of Education Workers of the State of Coahuila, Insurance of the Education Workers, Housing Fund for Education Workers at the Service of the State of Coahuila and the Education Workers Pension Directorate, most of it for embezzlement; 36 presented by the Superior State Audit (ASEC) and totaling more than 2,746 million pesos.
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor of Coahuila, Jesús Homero Flores Mier, said in an interview that there are more than 20 complaints in force, which indicate more than 300 million pesos, "that we have not yet been able to prove any of the facts or responsibilities, however, we have "We have been requesting information in the last year on these issues... we are starting the corresponding investigations, we have collected some testimonial evidence and we are waiting for some accounting opinions from the expert examinations area to be able to proceed by defining the resulting responsibilities."
He accepted that “the information we have found publicly from the unions has been deficient. We have to require information from the national SNTE to have the statutes or internal regulations to review their powers or responsibilities in each case.”
Meanwhile, support for the family of the deceased twins has not been adequate since the State Commission for Attention to Victims assured them “that a complaint is not appropriate, that [they need to fill out] a complaint form for the Human Rights Commission, that there are elements still to verify in time, manner and place, so what are they for? We needed to have complete records, the names of the doctors who treated us, and the time at which they treated us, but all that comes in the files,” Araceli said.