Living with a chronic disease, which one knows that it is incurable such as arterial hypertension or diabetes mellitus, is a martyrdom.

If a patient with one of those ills - or with both at the same time - does not control it, a chronic renal failure, retinopathy, blindness, diabetic foot, thrombosis and heart and cerebral infarction may appear.It is hard for a patient to undergo tedious peritoneal dialysis days or hemodialysis due to chronic terminal renal failure.

Only in kidney diseases, treatment is very expensive.According to calculations, a dialysis for a person in the US. UU. Demands an annual expense above US $ 50 thousand.The Cusco welfare network calculated in 2014 an expense of S/ 7 million for kidney diseases.

Needless to say hospitalization expenses and family environment stress.

Diagnosis of the sector

To face this problem, a professional Essalud Cusco group developed the comprehensive surveillance project of the chronic patient (VIP C).A salvation for patients with chronic diseases that received the 2017 prize on good practices in public management, organized by citizens per day.

It consists of the installation of two exclusive offices for annual periodic medical control for the detection of complications, control and monitoring of patients by nursing.Each patient is seen by several specialists (interdisciplinary approach).

The managers of the initiative are doctors John Huamanquispe Quintana, head of the Health Intelligence Office, and José Víctor Manchego Enriquez, a family doctor.In addition to twenty professionals.

CHANGES

Throughout the region there are 8,951 chronic patients, of which 5,787 belong to the Metropolitan Medical Center, located in the Wanchaq district.This hospital attends 33% of all the insured of Cusco.

The health benefit to this group of citizens was disorganized, with inappropriate management and control of poor patients.

With the VIP C project that began to apply in January 2016 things changed.Of the 5,787 patients, they entered the 2 thousand 135 program, while 3,651 continued to go traditionally.1,323 are hypertensive, 570 diabetics and 242 patients with both diseases.

José Luis, 75, and Máximo, 77, belong to VIP c.José Luis suffers from hypertension.When he agreed to integrate the group his health worsened day by day.Now his evil has been controlled by permanent monitoring and attention.

Maximum has diabetes and hypertension.His life was a Calvary a year ago.Since the program was well controlled and its monitored glucose.

The nurse reviews Máxima's feet.There are no signs of wound or necrose.“You are fine.Return in three months for another check, ”he says.

José Luis and maximum are the examples that the project application has advances.37% of patients were comprehensive and hospitalization was reduced by 6% to 40%.

There were fewer deaths.In 2015, 196 deaths were recorded, a figure that in 2016 fell to 118 deaths."Mortality fell by 40%," says Huamanquispe Quintana.