Argentine health minister releases millions of vaccine doses impounded by predecessor

[sandensea]

2. Macri didn't want to pay the import tariff - when he spent 4 years promoting imports!

And here's the kicker: the fee would've been paid from one federal agency (the Health Secretariat) to another (the AFIP revenue bureau).

So, yes. Of all the incompetence out of the Macri administration, this one has to go down as one of the most pathetic - and baffling.

But this incident also harkens back to the government indifference of another, darker era.

You might recall reading about the massive Chagas disease pandemics of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which afflicted much of South America at the time.

Charles Darwin was believed to have died of Chagas, from his earlier travels in the continent.

Part of the reason it spread so widely, besides the mud-hut poverty conditions so common back then, is that official policy was basically:

"This disease afflicts the poor and brown-skinned, so why on earth should we do anything to stop it?"

So for most of the early 20th century, any efforts to abate the pandemic were mainly financed by civic-minded aristocrats or doctors on their own dime.

Often, these efforts were met with ridicule and hostility by right-wing elites.

Ultimately, the Perón and Vargas administrations (in Argentina and Brazil, respectively) created their countries' first Health ministries in the 1940s, and made Chagas erradication official policy.

Even so, according to the latest data 390 people still die annually of Chagas in Argentina - and 5,351 in Brazil.