Short answers, pulled from the story.
Shock therapy describes sudden and dramatic neoliberal reforms intended to transition a planned economy into a free-market system. These policies include ending price controls, stopping government subsidies, privatizing state-owned industries, and tightening fiscal measures like higher taxes and lower spending.
President Victor Paz Estenssoro took office on the 6th of August 1985 and his Planning Minister Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada introduced Decree 21060 just three weeks later. This decree allowed the peso to float freely and ended all price controls while laying off two-thirds of employees from state oil and tin companies.
Russia experienced the worst peacetime increase in mortality among any industrialized country following rapid privatization schemes between 1987 and 1995. The World Health Organization linked IMF economic reform programs to significantly worsened tuberculosis incidence and mortality rates during this period.
Leszek Balcerowicz led a commission of experts formed in September 1989 that passed eleven acts signed by the president on the 31st of December 1989. These measures ended food shortages and restored goods to shop shelves despite unemployment rising from 0.3 percent in January 1990 to 6.5 percent by year-end.
Naomi Klein popularized the term shock therapy in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine where she argued neoliberal policies often result from strategies involving military coups or state-sponsored terror. She contends that shock therapy does not create new market structures but hopes destruction of planned economies automatically yields markets.