While the scandal surrounding the Chief of Staff, Manuel Adorni, concentrates much of the government news, the chainsaw advances in the portfolio carried by Mario Lugones. In recent days, there have been layoffs, closures and mergers of research and diagnostic centers, and doubts have grown about the continuity of Plan Remediar, a key piece of the Argentine health system.
The national deputy Pablo Yedlin, together with his counterpart Claudia Palladino, presented a draft declaration in the Chamber of Deputies to express the “deep concern” of the legislative body in the face of “non-compliance, lack of public information and reduction in the provision and distribution of program medications Remedy“, according to the portal Parliamentary.
Days before, the Minister of Health of Tierra del Fuego, Judit Di Giglio, had voiced their concern about the issue after the meeting of the Federal Health Council (COFESA) held at the end of March. According to the Fuegian management, At that meeting, Nación reported that the Program formally ended on April 1although an emergency purchase would be made to cover the months of May and June, after which it would be replaced by a new line of care focused on cardiovascular diseases that would include only three medications. So far, the plan distributes 79 presentations of essential drugs at the first level of care.
“It was a very sad day because it is a public policy that transcended different national governments. We proposed that if it had to be modified it could be reformulated, but They told us that it is a purely budgetary issue.”Di Giglio stated.
Previously, from Santa Fe, another alarm signal had arrived due to the situation of the Remediar Program. A report prepared by the Minister of Health of that province -Silvia Ciancio- warned that in 2025 the province received 55% fewer treatments than in 2024which forced us to reinforce the purchase of inputs with our own resources. “The decrease in these shipments is so dramatic that in 2025 Nación sent almost 5,000 fewer first aid kits,” he said, according to the local newspaper. The Capital.
This Monday the portal Pharmabizdedicated to news from the pharmaceutical industry, pointed out an “advance and setback” around Remediar, since after the presentation of a supposed new Remediar Plan starting in June, canceled the ad from the Ministry of Health. Then the Lugones portfolio published a new statement – still valid – where it noted that “The new strategy will focus on the most prevalent diseases, the efficient use of resources and the strengthening of the jurisdictional roleThat is, medications for fewer pathologies and greater responsibility delegated to the provinces, as Di Giglio warned.
Less science is less health
Almost in parallel with the advance of concerns for the present and future of Remediar, the Federal Science and Technology Board released the statement “less science is less health”, denouncing the closure and merger of strategic areas and the dismissal of 39 professionals.
🆘 The Minister of Health Mario Lugones dismantled the National Center for Diagnosis and Research in Endemo-Epidemias (CeNDIE-ANLIS Malbrán), the National Center for Quality Control and the National Center for Nutrition.
Communiqué from the Federal Board
✍️ https://t.co/ewa8vwKeAx pic.twitter.com/btIkhhCpjr— MesaFederalxCyT (@mesa_cytec) April 6, 2026
He Decree 192/26published on March 26, “moves forward with the closure and merger of the National Center for Diagnosis and Research in Endemo-epidemics (CeNDIE-ANLIS Malbrán), the National Center for Quality Control (CNCC) and the National Nutrition Center (CNN) of the ANLIS–Malbrán without transfers of resources or operational capabilities, affecting our country’s capabilities in research, diagnosis and production of biologicals.”
Meanwhile, on the first day of this month, 39 workers from the National Administration of Laboratories and Health Institutes (ANLIS) who worked in Misiones, Salta and Córdoba were notified of their dismissal since March 31.
REORGANIZATION OF ANLIS MALBRÁN TO STRENGTHEN THE EFFICIENCY OF THE SYSTEM
The Ministry of Health of the Nation is advancing with the reorganization of the structure of the National Administration of Laboratories and Health Institutes Dr. Carlos G. Malbrán to guarantee a… pic.twitter.com/AC5G66ye0G
— Ministry of Health of the Nation (@MinSalud_Ar) March 26, 2026
“The elimination of CeNDIE implies the loss of a center with its own territorial response capabilities against diseases such as dengue, chagas, leishmaniasis and yellow feveramong others,” the Board listed. And it noted that “the Center was characterized by a strong capacity for applied research, aimed at generating evidence for decision-making by the Ministry of Health, in coordination with multiple institutions of the scientific-technological system.”
The Center’s work was based on an interdisciplinary approach “that integrated data, social and environmental sciences and its sustained articulation with provincial and municipal jurisdictions, today fragmented by dispersing into other areas without guarantees of continuity“For example, it housed the Vector Operational Unit (UNOVE-CeNDIE ANLIS- ex CeREVE), located in Punilla Córdoba. As explained by the Bureau, it was the only unit specialized in the maintenance of triatomine colonies (vinchucas) and provided biological material for scientific studies to all scientific institutions at the national level.
“With more than 40 years of experience within the Ministry of Health, it has been one of the insectaries with the greatest biodiversity of vinchuca species in Latin America, with high genetic variability and maintenance of colonies of the main vector species in the region that transmit Chagas disease.” Today that Unit is “without effective operation, without personnel assigned for its support and maintenance.”
A systematic plan
The scientific group warned that “although the Decree indicates that closed centers are simply integrated into other structures, in practice this is false: Most of the current programs and functions in them are discontinued and orphaned. Especially in the socio-environmental fieldincluding the problem of dengue, where today there will no longer be an institution with the mission and capacity to evaluate the insecticides applied in homes against Aedes aegypti by the Ministry of Health, nor those lines of research linked to water and air quality, fires in Argentina and their impact on infectious and chronic diseases.
The new series of mergers that conceal closures adds to the dissolution, at the end of 2025, of the National Institute of Tropical Medicine (INMET-Puerto Iguazú), and the adjustment to the National Congenital Heart Disease Program at the beginning of 2026.
“These decisions are part of a sustained offensive that has been systematically dismantling the capabilities of the health and scientific system in our country since the Milei government took office. The elimination of the National Agency for Public Laboratories (ANLAP), the regressive modifications in social works and prepaid medicine, the changes in Law 27,611 (Thousand Days), all of them starting from DNU 70/2023, the dissolution of strategic institutes and the defunding of key areas such as vaccines, prevention of communicable diseases and health research are not isolated events, but rather form a strategy that corresponds to the political orientation of the current national government. and its announced mandate: destroy the State,” the statement concluded.
