Medicine shortages so bad Venezuela is using fingerprinting

Medicine shortages so bad Venezuela is using fingerprinting
LIMA, Peru — Venezuela's imploding economy has hit a new low: medicine rationing. Or so critics are saying. This week, the health minister unveiled a new national system that requires all patients to register their fingerprints at pharmacies. They will then be allowed to buy just a limited amount of medicines. Called SIAMED, the Spanish acronym for the Integral System for Access to Medicines, it aims to solve widespread shortages that have left many Venezuelans unable to treat all kinds of ailments, from hemorrhoids to cancer.  The result of the scarcities has been…Read more …

Colombia just legalized euthanasia. Here’s why that’s a big deal

Colombia just legalized euthanasia. Here’s why that’s a big deal
LIMA, Peru — Should a doctor be allowed to take a patient’s life? Colombia just said yes. Terminally ill adults there can now ask a physician to end their lives for them, after the South American country’s Health Ministry last week made that right legally binding. This is momentous — and highly controversial. It makes Colombia only the fourth nation in the world to allow euthanasia. Euthanasia is different from medically assisted suicide, which is legal in many places. In assisted death, a doctor prescribes life-ending medication, typically pills, but the patient is the one who…Read more …

Behold: Latin America’s first legal medical marijuana crop

Behold: Latin America’s first legal medical marijuana crop
LIMA, Peru — Medical marijuana is winning so much global support that even the United States’ surgeon general approves. Yet it seems somebody had forgotten to tell Latin America, until now. Chile has begun harvesting what’s thought to be Latin America’s first ever crop of legal medical marijuana. Plucking and trimming buds from all 425 plants, grown on municipal land in the upmarket Santiago suburb of La Florida, is expected to take about another week. When that’s done, the growers hope to have enough cannabis to treat 200 cancer patients. “This is a landmark not just…Read more …

Venezuela races to collect 10M signatures against Obama

Venezuela races to collect 10M signatures against Obama
LIMA, Peru — When President Obama declaredVenezuela a "national security threat" and smacked the country with sanctions last month, an overheated response from the South American nation's highly combustible government was inevitable. And so, President Nicolas Maduro is drumming up a petition, to be signed by Venezuelans opposed to the measure, to hand Obama in person at the Summit of the Americas in Panama April 10-11. That all sounds fair enough, until you realize Maduro has set himself the improbable target of getting 10 million signatures — equivalent to one in three Venezuelans,…Read more …