Self-medication increases pandemic deaths in Peru

LUIS ESPINOZA has been battling covid-19 in Peru since March. A doctor specialising in tropical medicine and infectious diseases, he was sent by the health ministry to Iquitos, in the northern jungle, when the pandemic began, then moved to Sullana, a sweltering northern city. Both cities have high numbers of deaths from covid-19. Many, says Dr Espinoza, were avoidable. “Patients who should not be dying are dying because of complications caused by self-medicating,” he says. That may help explain why Peru has had more deaths from the disease as a share of its population than all but one other country.