The workers of the Hospitals SAN JUAN DE DIOS and INFANTILE MATERNAL INSTITUTE, located in Bogot Colombia’s city denounce before the peoples of the world: Andrs Pastrana’s neoliberal government seeks to put an end to these biggest specialized university hospitals in the country, product of his desire to private to the help of the disastrous law 100 approved by the National Congress during Cesar Gaviria’s government in 1994. This law put an end to the responsibility of the Colombian State that puts under an obligation to guarantee the attention in health to all the citizens for Constitution, incorporating the attention in the net of state hospitals of public health to the market of the offer and the demand, converting to each hospital in kind of a private company and to the health like merchandise to the best bidder, leaving in fact on the outside at least from any possibility of attention and specialized hospitalization to the Colombian population’s 70%. The government’s criminal politics arrives to the end of refusing to incorporate in the National Budget and in the Plan of National Development, any located Þscal budget to cover the economic deÞcit and to save to the hospitals of its closings. This law likewise privatized the resources you pension them from the workers and the attention to labor risks or professionals. Be enough to say that the companies operators of these items obtain operational earnings of 87% and they are those in charge of to qualify and to decide that accident type or professional illness are recognized the workers, and to enter to pay him the compensation according to their own interpretation of the law. In the case of our hospitals, The San Juan de Dios and the Infantile Maternal Institute, they stopped to receive state budget from the promulgation of this law, and we were being suffocated systematically by the negative of the ofÞcial entities, to those that were lent the service of attention to their members, of canceling their billed obligations making us enter in a deÞcit of 20.000 million pesos, it calculates ridiculous if we keep in mind that the State dedicates 8 BILLIONS to combat to the guerrillas that dispute him the power. These Hospitals have an installed capacity of 800 beds, the best units of Urgencies, Intensive Cares, Surgery, Nefrologa, Unit of High Obstetric Risk and Neonatos; you program world scientists pilot, as the program “ Kangaroo “, recognized by the UN like an unique program to guarantee the life of the premature babies; it would be even in risk the program of the scientiÞc Patarroyo and their synthetic vaccine against the malaria. The true pretense when closing the hospitals is simple: to leave dismissed 1300 workers, to scrounge them their beneÞts and social and labor guarantees and their pensions; to stop to assist 3500 daily patients of the neediest strata from all Colombia to those that are not charged or they are charged very little and as a result to give the goods and infrastructure to companies even deprived in head of the exministry of health Alonso Gmez Duque and of the current director of the hospital Alvaro Gutierrez, propietaries of other hospital entities. We consider these imminent closings then as an act of barbarism against the essential rights of the Colombian town that it should cause the world condemnation as hurt humanity’s crime. Therefore we summon the international solidarity of the peoples, workers and of the men of well of the whole world so that with their protest voices they are manifested against this fact of social violence. We request therefore: 1. messages are sent to the presidency of the Republic of Colombia,(www.presidencia.gov.co) to the Ministry of the Interior, to the Ministry of Health, to the General Attorney’s ofÞce, requesting the immediate assignment of the necessary budget to avoid their closing, and the defense of the public health as a step in the attainment of social justice that so much requires our country. And it is interrogated the government with such questions as: * It will be that the money of the tax of the 2 for thousand to each bank transaction created is recently only good to rescue to those bankers broken fraudulently? * Will it be that the health of the Colombians besides being a right to guarantee for the State doesn’t make part of the social well-being that will lead to forge circumstances of peace? * Will it be that the such Plan Colombia presented by Pastrana in EE.UU.en days passed to get millions of dollars in we lend it doesn’t include the health of the Colombians? Or will they only serve for for the war? 2. boicots is promoted against the Colombian government ofÞcial delegations that travel to the out our country 3. they are ahead meetings of solidarity, it denounces and she/he protests before the consular headquarters and Colombian embassies We are them vastly grateful WORKERS of HSJD and IMI Octuber 5 1999