The director of the Bolivian Nuclear Energy Agency (ABEN), Hortensia Jiménez, confirmed the inauguration of the first Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Cancer Treatment this October. The institute is located in District 8 of the city of El Alto, near La Paz.
According to Jiménez, part of the technology equipment arrived in the country. The equipment includes linear accelerators and two tomographs, one for positron emission (PET / CT) and another for single-photon emission (SPECT / CT ), which allow early diagnosis of cancer patients.
In 2018, ABEN and the Argentine state company INVAP signed a contract to build three nuclear medicine institutes in Bolivia, with an investment of more than 150 million dollars.
The director of ABEN said that the other two nuclear medicine institutes would be inaugurated the first half of next year, in Santa Cruz and southern La Paz, where they are under construction.
