Gender violence will be incorporated into the Compulsory Medical Plan (PMO), and social and prepaid works must cover the benefits associated with addressing the problem, after the Senate signed a bill in this regard into law.
This initiative includes full and comprehensive coverage of preventive and therapeutic practices. All medical, psychological, psychiatric, pharmacological, surgical therapies, and any other attention that is necessary or pertinent will be included.
In this way, social projects, health providers and all those organizations included in this law must coordinate with the national, provincial and/or local authorities that provide programs for the attention of gender violence in order to guarantee that the Comprehensive care of the victims is carried out with the appropriate parameters and indications.
With 52 affirmative votes, the bill that incorporates the benefits associated with the comprehensive approach to gender-based violence to the Mandatory Medical Program (PMO) is unanimously approved.
– Argentine Senate (@SenadoArgentina) October 28, 2022
The new law clarifies that they are obliged to provide coverage as a mandatory benefit to social security projects, the Social Security Project of the Nation’s Judicial Branch, the Directorate of Social Assistance for Personnel of the National Congress, prepaid medicine entities, the National Institute of Social Services for Retirees and Pensioners, the Institute of Social Work of the Armed Forces and the entities that provide assistance to university personnel, as well as all those agents that provide medical-assistance services to their affiliates.
The project also clarifies that gender-based violence is defined as the social and health problem that derives from the provisions of the Law on the Comprehensive Protection of Women.
The initiative had received half sanction in the Lower House in 2020 and was promoted by Senator Alejandra Vigo (Córdoba Federal), when she was a deputy. It is worth mentioning that today, comprehensive treatment assistance for victims of gender-based violence is included in assistance in only two social projects: Ossacra (the Social Project of the Housewives’ Union) chaired by Vigo and in Apross, the social work of the province of Córdoba.