HEALTH-ARGENTINA: Rene Favaloro’s Broken Heart

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 1 2000 (IPS) - The suicide of internationally renowned heart surgeon René Favaloro, the creator of the coronary by-pass technique, unleashed a debate in Argentina on the thankless task of private foundations that serve the public and depend on government assistance which sometimes never arrives.

Two Argentine physicians have won the Nobel prize in medicine: Bernardo Houssay in 1947 and César Milstein in 1984. Favaloro — nominated for the Nobel prize in Israel — was famous for inventing coronary by-pass surgery.

On Monday, President Fernando de la Rúa studied a report on the finances of the Favaloro Foundation, after public allegations that the foundation’s critical financial situation lay behind the doctor’s decision to take his life.

Health minister Héctor Lombardo refuted the accusations, saying the health ministry’s door was always open to the doctor, who was one of its advisers.

But the beneficiaries of heart transplants and by-pass surgery paid him homage outside the foundation, and complained that his work had not received the support it merited.

“How could you not help him?” protested one man outside the foundation. A woman speculated that “now that the doctor has killed himself, they’ll surely do something for the foundation.” Others said they did not believe he had committed suicide, but that they suspected he was killed as part of an attempt to “privatise” his organisation.

Favaloro, 77, shot himself in the heart Saturday. And above and beyond the private reasons that led him to such a drastic decision, it is glaringly obvious that the foundation was experiencing severe financial troubles.

The coronary by-pass technique, which Favaloro himself practiced for the first time in a clinic in the US state of Ohio in 1967, has become more and more common worldwide for treating obstructions in blood vessels by creating a “bridge” between two veins or arteries.

With his prestige, the surgeon set up a non-profit foundation in 1978 to provide medical assistance in carrying out heart, lung and liver transplants. The foundation was also involved in teaching and research activities. Some 2,500 people from all walks of life undergo operations at the foundation every year.

“I am going through one of the most difficult moments of my life. The foundation has serious economic-financial problems as the result of everything that is happening in our country,” Favaloro said on Jun 22, just before receiving his last prize, awarded by the Pompidou Hospital in Paris.

The Favaloro Foundation receives public funds to treat people from low-income sectors and give them the same treatment received by patients of private clinics. However, the state owes 18 million dollars to the clinic, which in turn has run up a debt of 50 million dollars.

“It is getting increasingly difficult to sustain our daily work, which is offered to all members of the community alike, with advanced technology and highly skilled staff,” stated a message by Favaloro, published by the daily ‘La Nación’ the day after his death.

The doctor wrote that he had turned into a “beggar” who was no longer welcome in government offices, and whose phone calls were not even returned. “My task is calling, calling and knocking on doors to collect a bit of money to allow us to continue with our work,” the statement added.

Favaloro, a rural doctor who went on to have a brilliant career in the United States but decided nevertheless to return to Argentina, carried out 13,000 by-pass surgeries until he retired to teach. But in the end he was reduced to the role of a failed fund-raiser, in his own words.

It was not only the state that owed him money, but the trade union social services that provide medical care to workers as well.

Leaving aside the possibility that the doctor committed suicide for personal reasons, Dr. Ginés González García, president of the Fundación I-Salud, said that “in another country, this wouldn’t have happened to Favaloro.”

González said Favaloro had commented that for the past two years, he had not received a “very significant” state subsidy he had been promised during the administration of former president Carlos Menem (1989-99).

“The problem of these private institutions that serve the public in Argentina is that the state has taken no political decision to back them,” said González García. “It is different in the United States, where they are financed heavily through taxes, or in Europe where there are large state subsidies.”