Medical students of El Salvador meet the president

Representing the IPPNW students of El Salvador, Emperatriz Crespin, yesterday met with the President of El Salvador. The meeting was held in order to discuss ways to prevent small arms firearm violence in their country and was the culmination of many months of planning and working in coalition with other NGOs. Hospital firearm injury data collected by the El Salvadorean IPPNW (MESARES) helped make the case for reform which is now being taken up by the Congress. Students of MESARES had previously been collecting this data at selected hospitals in order to be able to back up their demands for stricter small arms control with hard facts and scientific data.

Emperatriz, together with representatives of the Consultor of UNPD, the Catholic University and the Fundation of Lawyers (FESPAD), had a meeting at the Presidential House and was able to present the data of homicidies by small arms, the data of costs to the public health system of small arms wounds, the position of the people about disarmament and some reforms and proposals that need to be modyfied within the official proposal.

The President agreed to constitute a comission with representatives from the goverment (Ministry of Defense), the Secretary of the Presidence, Public Security Council and Representatives from the country-wide coalition against small arms, in order to integrate the reforms from the proposals into official policy. Although Congress is currently reviewing the proposal made by the goverment, the President told the delegates that he was going to ask the congress members to postpone the approval of the law.