President Bachelet: “We are fully committed to the quality and dignity of our public healthcare system.”

In regard to the “Teaching Career” bill that is being debated in Congress, she said, “I want to ask you to support it and for the discussion to be conducted with the goal of improving the situation of teachers in mind, but above all placing our country’s children and young people at the center of the debate.”
This morning, President Michelle Bachelet and Health Minister Carmen Castillo inspected the work that is being done on the new Critical Patient Unit at Hospital Dr. Luis Calvo Mackenna, a pediatric facility in Santiago’s Providencia district. The project is 90% complete.
President Bachelet explained that the goal of this project is “to expand the critical patient unit so that children under the age of 15 can obtain quality healthcare in a hospital with the latest technology that gives them every chance of receiving adequate care and achieving a good recovery.”
The work is part of a larger development plan that also includes the standardization and expansion of the Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Units, which will create an integrated critical pediatric patient unit at the hospital.
The goal of the measure is to reduce occupancy of the emergency units by 80% so that more children can be treated. “This expansion will allow us to reduce the number of children who are referred to the private healthcare system. In other words, we will address the needs of our children in the public healthcare system,” the President added.
The project involves an investment of $4.165 billion pesos (US$8.5 million) in sector-specific funds. Construction began on January 7, 2014 and is expected to end in late 2015.
The renovation of the CPU at Hospital Luis Calvo Mackenna is part of the National Healthcare Investment Plan, which includes the construction of over 20 hospitals and 332 primary care facilities as well as the acquisition of clinical equipment, ambulances and other vehicles.
The President assured her audience that “this work and the responsibility that we have taken on are unprecedented. This is the most significant effort that has been made to develop healthcare infrastructure and equipment in Chile’s history. We have doubled the size of the historical investment, and we will see this through, allocating US$4 billion to healthcare infrastructure.”
She also stated that her administration “is fully committed to the quality and dignity of our public healthcare system throughout the nation, and we are happy to visits sites like this one because each step that we take forward in care means greater certainty regarding the health, care and dignity of our country’s inhabitants.”
The Rojas-Quintana Case and the Teaching Career Bill
At the beginning of her remarks, the President mentioned the case of Rodrigo Rojas de Negri and Carmen Gloria Quintana, two students who were burned alive by members of the Army during the dictatorship. “The most recent developments demonstrate that it is always good to get to the truth and that there can be justice, even if it takes 29 years. And this is important, because truth and justice will ensure that acts of that nature never again occur in our country,” she stated.
President Bachelet also referred to the vote taken today in Congress on the introduction of the Teaching Career Bill and stated that, “I want to ask you to support it and for the discussion to be conducted with the goal of improving the situation of teachers and their salaries in mind, but above all placing our country’s young people at the center of the debate. There are thousands of families expecting us to do a good job on this.”