BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — To outsiders, the Facebook group chat reads like a snarl of nonsensical emojis and letters. To uninsured Argentine cancer patients, it's a lifeline.
The surreptitious network connects advocates who have spare drugs to Argentines with cancer who lost access to their treatment in March 2024 when President Javier Milei suspended a federal agency, known as DADSE, that paid for their expensive medications.
Whenever Facebook cracks the coded pleas and removes the group for violating its rules on drug sales, another appears, swelling with Argentines who say they've grown sicker since the radical libertarian president took a chainsaw to health care.
''All I need for my body to function is this medication, and Milei is saying, ‘There's no money,''' said Ariel Wagener, a 47-year-old pizza chef with leukemia who was hospitalized this year with failing kidneys after losing access to his medication. Without DADSE, a month's worth of his leukemia drug costs $21,000.
Wagener's condition stabilized after he got leftover medication via Facebook, donated by a family whose loved one had died of cancer.
The halting of millions of dollars of free cancer drugs is just one way Milei's austerity drive has torn through the public health system that once set Argentina apart in Latin America, ensuring that health care was free for pretty much everyone who couldn't afford private insurance.
Since taking office in December 2023, Milei has slashed Argentina's health care budget by 48% in real terms. His administration fired over 2,000 Health Ministry employees, including 1,400 over just a few days in January.
As part of Milei's plan to remake Argentina's troubled economy and cut waste and bureaucracy, officials gutted the National Cancer Institute, suspending early detection programs for breast and cervical cancer.
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