A health worker denounces the lack of medicines and specialists in communities in the Mexican state of Sonora
14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, 3 December 2024 — The 96 Cuban doctors that the Mexican Government boasts of having incorporated into the Sonora hospitals are not even remotely sufficient to solve the state’s problems. “Neither with the Cubans nor with the announcements of new hospitals have the shortages in the Sonora health services been eradicated,” a nurse, who requested anonymity in the face of possible reprisals, told 14ymedio. “There is a shortage of medical supplies at the IMSS-Bienestar hospital in Nogales. Some of the patients have to buy their own medications,” she says.
The same source reveals that of the 100 Cuban specialists that Gabriela Nucamendi Cervantes, director of Imss-Bienestar, the free health organization created during the Administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to replace the Popular Insurance, announced this Sunday, “none has been sent to Etchojoa,” which is considered the poorest municipality in Sonora.
Given the lack of doctors, last February “16 medical interns (students) of medicine were sent to 12 health centers that are in the rural area of the municipality. The boys come from universities in Sonora and Sinaloa,” says the nurse, who wonders why the Cuban doctors were not taken to this site.
Last May, the MegaNoticias portal denounced the backwardness in healthcare in the northern state. In Etchojoa “there is an obvious lag in the issue of health, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi). Only 28.6% have a mobile unit for transfer, and there is a 41.9% poverty rate.”
Health deficiencies also prevail in the Mochipaco ejido* where “for 30 years, a house enabled as a health center has been closed.” In Guaytana, history repeats itself: there are no doctors established to attend to the population.
On November 27, Mayor Jorge Alberto Elías Retes was elected as vice president of the Health Network to meet the needs in the southern region of the state. “The fight against dengue and the urgent need for doctors for rural health services,” are the two primary considerations of the Government, he emphasized.
In her speech, Gabriela Nucamendi Cervantes recognizes the valuable addition of the Cubans, given the shortage of specialists in several municipalities. “We are fortunate that the Cuban doctors and psychiatrists are here. We just sent two to the mountains and are going to distribute them throughout the state,” she said.
Nucamendi told the newspaper El Sol de Hermosillo that Cuban specialists were helping in the municipalities of “Magdalena, Moctezuma and Álamos, especially in community hospitals that are difficult to cover.” The official said that others are in the Vícam Settlement, located in Yaqui territory in the south of the state, where a $26,014,316 hospital is under construction.
The Cubans are also working in the General Specialties Hospital and the Children’s Hospital in Hermosillo.
Regarding the per diem of Cuban doctors, at the beginning of October it was revealed that the Government of Mexico pays 5,188 dollars a month for salary, transportation, food and lodging for each of the 3,101 Cuban specialists hired to offer services in rural areas.
*Translator’s note: An ejido is a tract of land held in common by the inhabitants of a Mexican village and farmed cooperatively or individually.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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