Cuban Doctors Monopolize Internships for Mexican Students

The University of San Luis Potosí has ​​been forced to negotiate with hospitals to obtain new positions for Mexican graduates

Ismael Francisco Herrera Benavente said that Cuban doctors are displacing Mexican doctors in San Luis Potosí / Video capture/@Potosinoticia01

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Mexico City, 3 February 2025 — The president of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of San Luis Potosí in Mexico said that Cuban doctors hired by Mexico lack the necessary “certifications” to practice. According to Ismael Francisco Herrera Benavente, the training of Cuban health workers is not only doubtful, but their arrival has also begun to “displace” university graduates, especially in the internships they must do as part of their social service.

“We have to pass several accreditations (studies), validations, evaluations and exams for medical residency,” Herrera Benavente told local media, and he doubts that the Cubans are as well trained as their own students. The doctor’s complaint adds to the discontent shown last September by the College of the Medical Profession. “Cubans do not have a professional ID and cannot issue prescriptions,” stressed the president of the Antonio Chalita Manzur institution.

The lack of places for internships, which have been filled with Cuban health workers, has forced the union to arrange more internships with hospitals, so that the teaching of Mexicans is not truncated.

The program of hiring Cuban doctors in Mexico, initially designed to cover rural and remote areas, has left more disappointment than relief for the national medical union.

A Cuban doctor in the community of San Juan de las Vegas in San Luis Potosí / Facebook/Cuban Medical Brigade San Luis Potosí, Mexico

The governor of San Luis Potosí, Ricardo Gallardo Cardona, who promised – like the former president of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) – to have a medical service like that of Denmark, said that 80 Cuban doctors work in San Luis Potosí.

According to official data, Mexico has 669 hospitals in different states, 11,935 clinics and 274,977 doctors, nurses and administrative workers. The director of the Mexican Social Security Institute, Zoé Robledo, confirmed last December the arrival of 3,100 Cuban specialists to reinforce López Obrador’s health project in rural areas. For 610 of these doctors, the Government disbursed 23,227,156 euros according to three contracts concluded between July 2022 and 2023.

The program promoted by the López Obrador Administration is continuing with his successor, Claudia Sheinbaun. “We continue with the hiring,” she said on Sunday. The president argued that the lack of specialists was because “during the entire neoliberal period, medical specialists stopped training. It was thought that restricting admission would lead to greater excellence in training, but, in reality, what happened was that they stopped training medical specialists.”

Sheinbaum said that due to this lack of doctors, there was “a need to hire other nationalities to help and support us in the care of the population.” In addition, she said she was not hiring foreign health workers over Mexicans.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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