In the state, a shortage of specialists and a shortage of medicines prevail, an opponent denounces.
14ymedio, Mexico City, 21 May 2024 — More than two years after Mexico formalized its hiring of Cuban doctors, none of the 929 specialists who have arrived in the country have been sent to San Luis Potosí. Thus, “the lack of adequate access to basic medical services and the shortage of drugs persists,” denounced Aranzazú Puente Bustindui , an opposition candidate for a local council, in an interview for the newspaper Código San Luis.
Puente Bustindui lamented that the emergence of IMSS-Bienestar, the free health organization created by the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador for 23 states in the country, has affected Mexican doctors.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who presumes to create a health system like that of Denmark, has not filled the doctor’s positions with Cuban specialists, as he promised in April 2023.
In April of this year, specialists from twelve areas of the Ignacio Morones Prieto Central Hospital reported that deficiencies in infrastructure, services and payments affected their work.
Aranzazú Puente Bustindui denounced “the lack of adequate access to basic medical services and that the shortage of drugs persists”
The shortage of doctors was a problem that was intended to be solved with the arrival of specialists from Cuba, with Governor Ricardo Gallardo insisting in 2022 on the hiring of these doctors.
Gallardo insisted that, due to the lack of personnel, the then head of health services, Daniel Acosta Díaz de León, not only had to address administrative issues, he has also had to cover the lack of doctors in the operating room. He also said that there were only two neurosurgeons in the entity, a claim that was refuted by the state College of Medical Profession, stating that there were 32 neurologists and 30 neurosurgeons.
This Monday, the College stated that due to “inadequate working conditions, low salaries and insecurity,” doctors have sought other employment options. “A lot of personnel are needed, especially in Health Centers far from the capital of Potosí,” accepted Antonio Chalita Manzur, president of the College of the Medical Profession.
Of the healthcare workers who have arrived in Mexico, 109 were sent to Nayarit and another 52 to Guerrero. The rest of the Cubans are found in Baja California Sur (51), Campeche (51), Chiapas (12), Colima (86), Michoacán (71), Hidalgo (39), Oaxaca (68), Quintana Roo (31) , Sonora (60), Tamaulipas (15), Tlaxcala (105), Veracruz (25), Yucatán (3) and in Zacatecas (68).
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