Covid-19: Peru's ex-leader accused of jumping vaccine queue tests positive
Published 1 day ago
EPA
Martín Vizcarra received a vaccine in October, four months before Peru started rolling out its vaccination programme
Peru's former president, Martín Vizcarra, has tested positive for coronavirus six months after he said he had been vaccinated against Covid-19.
Mr Vizcarra confirmed the positive test just days after he was banned from public office for allegedly jumping the queue to receive the vaccine.
He is one of dozens of public officials embroiled in the "vaccinegate" scandal.
Mr Vizcarra said he was a volunteer in a trial, but the university hosting it said he asked to be vaccinated.
Only 2.5% of Peruvians have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine so far and the country is going through a second wave, registering record numbers of cases and deaths in recent weeks.
More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56887533
Any one in politics in Peru who doesn't support the vicious, murderous dictator Fujimori's candidate daughter, Keiko, is a hero, in my view.
At least he didn't force indigenous women to be sterilized so they couldn't bear children, as did the dictator Fujimori, who got no backlash from the only ones who counted, apparently, the European descended Peruvians.
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Forced sterilisation haunts Peruvian women decades on
By Javier Lizarzaburu
Lima
Published 2 December 2015
JAVIER LIZARZABURU
Sabina Huillca is one of the women who was forcibly sterilised in Peru
Sabina Huillca, 46, sells bread on the streets of Lima.
Twenty years ago she was growing potatoes and corn and bringing up her children in her native Huayllacocha, a village in the Andes four hours by car from the provincial capital, Cuzco.
But she told me her life changed forever one day in 1996.
A doctor suggested Ms Huillca, who was heavily pregnant at the time, visit a health clinic in the town of Izcuchaca.
'Nightmare'
She told the BBC that the nightmare started straight after she gave birth.
ALAMY
Most of the victims were poor indigenous women
"A nurse put me on a stretcher and tied my hands and feet," she recalled.
"I asked them to bring me my little baby girl but instead they anesthetised me," she said.
"When I woke up, the doctor was stitching my stomach. I started screaming, I knew I had been sterilised."
Ms Huillca was a victim of a family planning programme as a result of which thousands of women were forcibly sterilised.
The programme, launched in 1996 by then-president Alberto Fujimori - who argued that a lower birth rate would drive down poverty - at first received much praise.
But then more and more women complained about being sterilised without their consent.
Most of them were poor, indigenous and spoke Quechua.
. . .
According to testimony given by her husband, in 1996 she began coming under constant pressure from staff at her local health-centre to be sterilised.
She was even told that it was illegal to have more than five children and that she could be jailed for having any more.
She finally succumbed to the pressure and agreed to have the tubal ligation procedure in March 1998.
But her husband alleged that she was not given any information about the risks involved.
Eight days after she was sterilised, Ms Mestanza died of a post-operative infection which doctors had failed to treat.
Her husband said that he requested that his wife be given medical attention on a number of occasions and was refused.
. . .
Esperanza Huayama said she was lured to a health clinic by promises of food, vitamins and medicine.
Health Ministry staff went from village to village and according to Ms Huayama, at least 100 women from her area went to the clinic on the same day as she did.
"I was three months pregnant and I didn't know it. But they [health centre staff] did and still they went ahead." she said.
"First they offered medicine and then they treated us like animals."
Micaela Flores said she and other women were taken by lorries to a health centre.
"We all arrived innocent and happy, then we heard screams and I just ran."
She said the doors were padlocked so she could not escape and that she was sterilised against her will.
More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-34855804
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Dictator Fujimori, who was not impeached,
even though he sterilized thousands of
Native Peruvians against their will. Some
have called it a form of genocide.
Keiko Fujimori, dictator's daughter and current Presidential candidate, powerful politician in Peru, perennially,
arch-conservative, of course.
Snort.
