Mexicans will do almost anything to avoid a public hospital emergency room, where ailing patients may languish for hours slumped on cracked linoleum floors that smell of sweat, sickness and pine-scented disinfectant.

Many don't see doctors at all, heading instead to the clerk at the corner pharmacy for advice on coping with a cold or a flu.
So it's no surprise that when a dangerous new swine flu virus began to sweep across Mexico, many waited too long to seek medical help — more than a week on average, according to federal Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova.
These initial delays complicated treatment, possibly explaining why 45 of the world's 47 swine flu deaths occurred in Mexico.
It also made it more difficult for Mexico to recognize the outbreak for what it was. By the time Cordova announced a swine flu epidemic on April 23, the virus had already spread across the country and beyond.
Mexico's big cities have fancy private hospitals stocked with modern equipment and staffed with U.S. board-certified specialists. Americans increasingly come to Mexico for good care at low prices. The best of the public system is world-class too, with top doctors at elite centers for specialized diseases.
But Mexico's everyday public hospital system is in crisis.
Some patients suspected of having swine flu told The Associated Press that public hospitals turned them away or forced them to wait for hours for treatment even after the government declared a national emergency.
Those who sought help before the alert — often arriving with headaches, high fevers and difficulty breathing — encountered baffled doctors who had not been warned to watch for a new virus.
Mexicans navigate a patchwork of public and private hospital systems. There are hospitals for government employees and hospitals for workers enrolled in government health plans through private employers. Most patients have to go to a hospital tied to a specific agency.
"If someone is sick, he can't simply say, 'I'm going to the doctor' or 'I'm going to the hospital,' because it depends on whether he has Social Security or if he has to go to another institution," said Dr. Malaquias Lopez Cervantes, a leading epidemiologist at Mexico's National Autonomous University.
"And if he comes (to the wrong hospital), somebody is going to tell him that he doesn't have the right to be treated."
While access to health care is a right enshrined in the Mexican constitution, millions of Mexicans have no health insurance at all.
Mexico spends only 6.6 percent of its gross domestic product on health care — less than half the U.S. figure. No country in the 30-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development puts a smaller share of public money into its health care system.
That means the hospitals serving most of Mexico's 44 million poor are often crowded, ill-equipped and staffed with harried, underpaid staff working for a dizzying array of bureaucracies.
It's so crowded, confusing and bureaucratic that the poor are more likely to head for a pharmacy, hoping to find a cheap remedy for "gripe" (pronounced GREE-pay) — a word that can cover anything from a mild cold to a deadly flu.
Most pharmacies dole out antibiotics and a host of other powerful drugs without a prescription. That encourages Mexicans to self-medicate, relying on a counter clerk's suggestion, dosing themselves with whatever worked the last time they had a fever and waiting a day or two to see what happens.
Some pharmacies even drum up business by tacking a doctor's office onto the side — offering basic checkups for as little as 25 pesos ($2) — still roughly half a day's pay for a minimum-wage worker.
In Mexico City's working-class Padierna neighborhood, Dr. Oscar Aguilera sees patients in a small office at the back of a discount pharmacy, with an open-air waiting room behind a row of graffiti-tagged taco stands.
Even in normal times, most of his patients come in with a cold or a flu. Most now show no signs of swine flu, he said, but "20 percent show some symptoms and we send them to the hospital."
Following the public alert on April 23, fear has driven patients to his office even at the slightest symptom.
Mexicans with flu symptoms might have sought better care far earlier if the public health care system had done the same kind of flu surveillance common in the U.S. and other developed nations.
Mexico keeps close watch on dangerous tropical diseases such as dengue, but epidemiologists pay less attention to flu, just one class of viruses contributing to Mexico's 23 million annual cases of respiratory illness.
Mexican doctors "really were not trained thinking of the existence of influenza" as a specific threat, Lopez Cervantes said.
In all of 2008, Mexico's official epidemiological bulletin reported only 151 confirmed cases of flu. By comparison, U.S. officials ran tests that confirmed nearly 40,000 flu cases last season. Mexico has about a third the population of the United States.

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VSThere is a growing concern in the diet, health-conscious era, the vegetarian is a fashionable concept, many people are convinced that vegetarian food helps longevity, will help in the diet to help detoxification, and long-term been a few out of meat, such as easy to get heart disease, gout, arthritis, constipation, cancer and many other hazards, so a set of environmental protection has become time vegetarian, slimming, beauty, Pai drug is equal to one health food, but there are a lot of information on long-term vegetarian easily lead people to a lack of trace elements, resulting in nutritional imbalance, the same hazardous to their health. That in the end is a good or a vegetarian to eat meat then? PK vegetarian meat, you have to stand on which sidevegetarianvegetarian story: the impact of marriage by the husband (her husband is firm and predators, no meat is not Huan), a day or two to eat less meat, eating too much on that light, and in any case had to think of ways to improve it. This kind of life in just a few years, the effect will be immediate, starting with seeds slowly getting round face, and her husband more and more couples phase, and then swimming circle on the lower abdomen began to thicken, from a small waist into a big fine ventral po, the most serious is that even when the medical examination found that blood glucose and blood pressure are signs of excessive, and even insist on fatty liver are enlivened by getting into the act! Let me make up its mind it was this physical examination carried out in the end that will be vegetarian determination, as previously although often clamored to lose weight, but only for beauty, it is difficult to withstand the temptation of food. This time is to good health, we can not merely for consumption as food, young becomes Yao Guanzi ah. Through hard and bitter struggle (husband insisted he had been eating meat, but the good times stick), her husband finally agreed to let me try a three-month vegetarian diet therapy, but also not to mention really have a good effect, not only for nearly 10 kilograms of weight loss, blood glucose and Blood pressure is also gradually become normal, but fatty liver is no improvement in any case, only a mild, no matter the time being it.expert vegetarian, said:animals being slaughtered When these animals shock, then the meat on the one hand there will be congestion on the other hand the flesh of these animals will secrete a toxin that people with a toxin that if long-term eating meat, the health impact could be like with knowledge of the. Why modern society, vegetarian blowing wind, and in fact this is one of the main one, vegetarian, at least natural, do not contain these animals secrete toxins out.Some people think that vegetarian diet, inadequate nutrition, if it is in the fourth, fifty years ago, you said vegetarian, inadequate nutrition, then perhaps together something reasonable, because at that time, that is, everybody eats meat, nutrition is not enough, after all, We have enough to eat Well, how can nutrition. But now, we have a lot of people are not nutritious enough, but too many nutrients, and even long-nutrition, and a lot of rich man's disease are not always followed by excess nutrients come from Well, so everyone was vegetarian nutritionists advocate, promote vegetarian regimen, I think that this is very much justified.eating vegetarian is not eating grass, bark, mountain vegetables, vegetarian, very precise, can also eat more, eat this food, inadequate nutrition, you can go from another food supplement, so long as they can reasonably with, learn from each other, vegetarian nutrition, not only can, but also eat their way to health and longevity.meat activistsmeat story: their own diet It is not get along without meat, I eat vegetarian food, it is simply living death. Themselves and friends to go Vegetarian Restaurant has eaten two meals, but he's not the meat of the meal is always almost anything, but soon feel hungry after a meal eaten. It seems I can not really adapt to vegetarian, Internet search some vegetarian. Most of the explanation is that vegetarian food can be beauty, weight loss. Usually like to focus on their food knowledge, see this explanation is really very funny. Who says vegetarian food can be beauty, weight loss. People who eat vegetarian a long time, and his face generally not a good look. Pale and did not say that eating vegetarian a long time people can easily trace the lack of nutrition. Nutritional balance, but the health risks. Let me say to lose weight, eating vegetarian is not necessarily able to effectively lose weight, if unreasonably diet, but will Yuejianyuefei, counterproductive. Furthermore in order to lose weight and become a vegetarian and a number of short-term weight will be down, but his physical condition is also likely to decline in many. The catering sector, some experts also said: "The meat and the meat is not long, certainly not Huyou." Many institutions say that to lose weight, lose weight, eat a single food, such as eating beef every day, the same a long time to lose weight.meat expert, said:say that many people worry that eating meat can cause high blood pressure and high cholesterol. But I think that as long as the amount of food, would not have an excess. We can look up online high blood pressure and high cholesterol group's medical history, of which there are many vegetarians are also suffering from high blood pressure and high cholesterol. But also there are many people who eat vegetarian food only after the disease was. It suffices to prove that the meat is not a direct result of the cause of high blood pressure and high cholesterol, but diet is not scientifically and reasonably diet, nutrition lessons imbalance is the root of illness.meal can not do without meat, this is not terrible. As long as we adhere to the scientific and reasonable way to eat meat, they would be perfectly healthy. Let us abandon the vegetarian theory of it, will be carried out in the end meat.[This quote was last intimate sister at 2010-1-8 17:30 by Editor]Annex: You need to login or register in order to view. Key Words : [Only Registered users can see links . Click Here To Register...], world of warcraft gold, [Only Registered users can see links . Click Here To Register...], wow power leveling, [Only Registered users can see links . Click Here To Register...], buy cheap [Only Registered users can see links . Click Here To Register...].More world of warcraft news here:

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