Argentina strengthens operation of National Hospital Network

Through a change in their organisational culture, 19 hospitals dependent on the national government that were reequipped during the pandemic or in some cases enabled after being closed, will function as a reference healthcare network for the rest of the provincial or municipal public hospitals, thus occupying the role of leadership in the matter of therapeutic approaches, professional training and translational scientific research, for which Argentina will make a millionaire investment in stateof-the-art equipment. The country will finance the purchase of highcost equipment for health research, including Real-Time PCR thermal cyclers, ultra-freezers, and DNA sequencers, which will be used for Translational Knowledge Units (UCT) that operate in national hospitals. In line with the budget expansion that the national government arranged for the health portfolio, the increase in the budgets allocated to the establishments that make up the National Hospital Network was also relevant. Thus, while in 2019 the health portfolio assigned only 7,929 million pesos to SAMIC Hospitals, in 2020 that sum became more than 16,458 million, and in 2021 it exceeded 21,342 million pesos, a figure that included the expansion and opening of new hospitals.