14ymedio, Mexico City, 6 October 2024 — The Government of Mexico pays $5,188 per month for each of the 3,101 doctors it hired from Cuba to offer services in rural areas. The expenditure amounts to a total of 16,087,988 dollars each month. A large part of the money is used to cover transport services, food and lodging for doctors, the newspaper Reforma reported this Sunday.
Of that monthly payment, most of it – 4,015 dollars – is intended for food, lodging and transportation for the health workers, which represents an annual delivery of 149,406,180 dollars to cover only the per diem allowances of the Cubans. The media does not mention whether similar amounts will be paid for the 5,000 doctors that Mexico plans to hire.
The figures offered by Reforma, however, only add data to a well-known and criticized reality in the Mexican medical union: the Government prefers to pay foreigners rather than its national doctors.
In 2022, Mexican nurse Ricardo Rivas said that, for the 60 Cuban specialists who had arrived in the state of Nayarit, they were guaranteeing “accommodation, food and transportation,” in addition to meals, while for national residents they had eliminated “the food service” in hospitals.
Later, in February of last year, the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) was called out for granting 43 Cuban specialists, sent to Michoacán, lodging in a double room that included “breakfast and buffet lunches,” in addition to “a la carte” dinners. The gift generated controversy among Mexican doctors and residents, who lack these free services.
The same newspaper reported that the Andrés Manuel López Obrador Administration, which ended on October 1, favored four companies with contracts “for the logistics required by the doctors.” The company Pigudi Gastronómico, specialized in banquets, was the main beneficiary.
The last week of September, three other contracts were unveiled – if effect between July 2022 and 2023 – for which Mexico paid 23,227,156 euros for 610 specialists on the Island.
An official of the Institute of Health for Welfare (INSABI) – created by the López Obrador government to provide health assistance and free medication – told 14ymedio in 2022 that the Mexican government paid the Cuban government 2,042 dollars per specialist and 1,722 dollars per general practitioner.
Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos S.A. de C.V., a Cuban company internationally accused of human trafficking, was in charge of concluding the contracts for the Cuban doctors.
Months later, it was specified that the person in charge of the logistics of the Island’s doctors in Mexico is Neuronic Mexicana, a subsidiary of Neuronic S.A Cuba. This company has been, since 2018, the representative for the products and services of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry of the Island and is under the presidency of Tania Guerra.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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