Source: O Liberal - PA - 11/08/2009

Bureaucracy has long been said to kill. But, strictly speaking, it is not bureaucracy that kills or causes harm or injury to human beings.

What kills and harms is the excess of bureaucracy, it is the disdain, it is the lack of absolute notion about priorities that directly affect the well-being of an entire community or a specific group of people.

Bureaucracy, in itself, is neither an evil nor a good. It is simply necessary. It involves routines, procedures, common practices. When this overrides common sense, rationality, then we do have the bureaucracy of evil.

Paraense society assists, in relation to patients treated by Hospital Ophir Loyola (HOL), a mixture of bureaucracy of evil with disdain, disrespect and disregard for basic citizens' rights. In short: watch the cruelty dressed as bureaucracy - or vice versa. The hospital's only set of radiotherapy has frequently presented problems that prevent full care for patients undergoing cancer treatment. The repairs, which should be done urgently, quickly, take months. That is inadmissible.

It is a fact, moreover, that there are two more sets of radiotherapy equipment, both new, received from the Ministry of Health in the government before the current one, but they have never been installed until today. One of these sets was destined for the Regional Hospital of Santarém, another for the Hospital Ophir Loyola.

The result of all this: about 200 people are paralyzed at HOL. Everyone is at serious risk that their situation will be aggravated. In the western region of the state, hundreds of people are not even able to purchase a ticket to travel to Santarém, let alone Belém. And if they came to the Capital, they would also be left without assistance. The alternative to this situation is unbelievable: the hospital management announced to all patients that, in order not to interrupt the treatment prescribed for them, they will need to travel to other states, including Piauí and Tocantins.

This was not a suggestion, a recommendation. It was a communication, typical of those made by the cruelest, most insensitive, coldest bureaucrats.

If it were not so, these problems would all have been solved for months, because they have been going on for months. The hospital management should have already taken appropriate legal measures to force companies and suppliers to provide maintenance, to supply parts, in short, to adopt procedures at their own expense, to prevent dozens of people from suffering the very serious consequences of this succession of scandalous omissions and criminals.

There is no explanation that can justify all of this. There are administrators and administrators; there are managers and managers. Those who have a duty of duty to take care of human lives need to adjust their procedures and conduct to this particularity.

In the same way, there is bureaucracy and bureaucracy. The one that is adopted in places and environments that must preserve human life must also adjust its routines to this particularity. That is why there is not and will not be any justification that is congruent, consistent, harmonious with common sense and capable of convincing anyone that there was, at the very least, negligence of the Public Power in preserving adequate minimum conditions to guarantee service of patients who have at Ophir Loyola Hospital the only reference in the treatment of cancer in the North.

The same Public Power that is so jealous in implementing works that yield votes must be more and more jealous of its obligation to implement works and adopt practices that save lives or preserve them. When vows overlap with life, cruelty results. A cruelty that, unfortunately, sacrifices lives. When vows overlap with life, the result is cruelty that sacrifices lives.