WRITINGS BY

EL GRÁFICO, Oaxaca

ANTEQUERA, Oaxaca

September 28, 2005

The “Transparency Commission” of COESIDA will meet September 30.

             September 30 of this year may prove to be an auspicious day.  There will take place in the offices of COESIDA, a state institution, one of the most important meetings of its history.  The five members of the first “transparency commission” in the state of Oaxaca will enter the stairs to the third flood of the building in Colonia Reforma, under the eyes of citizens, families, friends, artists, doctors, and even the eyes of their own HIV/AIDS patients.  One of the commissioners, who remains unnamed, that the commission will meet with their work previously completed.  The following day, Saturday October 1, the five members will meet again to present to the public their official report.

            The Commission consists in five members, four anonymous and the director of COESIDA, the Dr. Gabriela Velásquez Rosas, a woman known in the highest levels of power in the State.  “The session will not be open to the media, neither local nor national,” she said, “because of the confidentiality of the subjects which will be addressed.”   Nor will members of the public, or families, she added, will be admitted.  The hour of the meeting will not be announced.

            For some time, various non-governmental organizations have been soliciting information from the archives of COESIDA.  As a result of their inability to supply this information, this Transparency Commission was formed, with the mandate to open the original documents to public scrutiny.

            As part of one of its most important subjects to address, it is expected that the official report on the first of October will include the full inventories of AIDS medicines and the distribution of said medicines to its patients, as has been requested for two consecutive years by the Frente Común Contra el SIDA (Common Front Against AIDS), an NGO in Oaxaca.  In this way, COESIDA will be able to confirm or not confirm its own reports of number of patients receiving antiretroviral drugs.

Of further importance to this Commission will be to address the notable phenomenon which has occurred each six years in Oaxaca and in which a dramatic decrease in AIDS cases corresponds to the final year of each administration and the official report by the outgoing Secretary of Health.  This was the case at the end of the term of Gov. Diódoro Carrasco, when reported cases dropped by some 30%, a curious case, not even possible in first world countries.  At the moment, the expected report will deal with the end of term of José Murat.

            Finally, the Commission must confront the question most urgent of its agenda, where are the some 636 reported AIDS cases in the State of Oaxaca, who are NOT patients of COESIDA and are NOT receiving the medical attention for this disease.  This Commission cannot ignore the statistics of its own Secretary of Health and the great discrepancy of its own reports. 

            Oaxaca, facing the nation, will be the home of this years National AIDS Convention of Mexico, and has an enormous responsibility to see that this Commission works with a “transparency” which the public could find believable. 

Frente Común Contra el SIDA, Oaxaca, A.C.