Fingerprint junkies

Good morning!

Today I’ll tell you something about Andalusia because it can also be Spain within Spain. Like Madrid. The fact is that it has not been the best of weeks for the Andalusian Government. To understand each other: those who control how public money is spent in the community (the Intervention, that’s what it’s called) have told Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla’s team that not like thatwhich cannot abuse as it does small and chained contracts to buy medicines, carry out work in a hospital or order Christmas decorations.

In technical contracting jargon they are called minor contracts and are designed for small expenses. They cannot exceed 15,000 euros and, as their nature is that of paying small expenses, they are subject to the minimum controls. The problem, the Intervention tells the Board in a report What my colleague Daniel Cela has revealed, is when you put together many of these mini contracts to pay for something large whose volume would require a public tender or a negotiation without advertising (another technical word), other modalities contemplated by the law.

With this mess in Andalusia, we consulted with a string of experts in health planning and management. we were wondering if this could be happening in more places. The response every time we picked up the phone was similar: it is a widespread practice, it happens more than it should, sometimes they are divided for the sake of agility. My favorite response was this: “They are contract hiring junkies.”

Things can be explained more or less like this: “The contract law is too rigid and dysfunctional for healthcare, but when they are divided out of necessity, there are many who put lettuce between cabbages.” The healthcare sector often requires quick responses, unexpected purchases and high expenses.

This is an authoritative argument to justify some cutting, experts agree. It is a “politically very sensitive” thing because “no one would understand stopping the purchase of a medicine.” Another very different thing is that it is systematically used for everything. In Andalusia all kinds of concepts have been revealed (some you wouldn’t imagine) reaching 468 million euros in a single year. A little strange.

Within the Andalusian Government itself, the Minister of Health He wanted to save his ship, but not the one with the Christmas lights. “It is flatly false that there are contracts that violate the law. “I talk about health, I don’t talk about Christmas lighting, I’m not going to get into those things.” Andalusia, I am afraid, is not the first community –We already told a similar case in Madrid in 2018– nor will it be the last. That does not mean, no matter how frequent, that it is done well.

While you were doing other things…

The good news of the week

A 25-year-old diabetic woman has managed to produce its own insulin. It seems like a miracle but it’s called science. A group of Chinese researchers has completed a complex process of transplanting stem cells that have been reprogrammed to function as a mini pancreas.

The problem with people with type 1 diabetes, like this patient, is that they are not able to produce a hormone as important as insulin that allows glucose to be distributed throughout the organs and not accumulate in the bloodstream.

We must be careful with saying that diabetes has a cure because the experiment has been successful in only one patient, but the example opens a door to hope. Without a doubt, the best news of the week.

Have a nice weekend. I’ll wait for you next Saturday with more things.

Sofia