The Cuban doctors working in Mexico total 552, with 68 who began their activity on January 17, Zoé Robledo, director of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), informed on Tuesday.
Robledo reported on the healthcare programs, as he does at President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s morning press briefing at the National Palace every Tuesday.
The official gave an account of the group’s work in hospitals in Colima, Guerrero, Michoacan, Oaxaca, Zacatecas, and Morelos, as well as several specialties ranging from pediatrics and geriatrics to cardiology, rehabilitation, internal medicine, and others.
Cuban doctors are a significant part of a very ambitious national healthcare plan that aims to bring Mexico in two years to the level of medical-hospital assistance of Sweden and other European countries advanced in that field, and completely free of charge, including medicines.
This Cuban participation has also stimulated the inclusion of Mexican general practitioners and specialists in hospitals and healthcare centers in hard-to-reach places that remained without a single professional for years.
Robledo said the last call to Mexican professionals was from January 3 to 17 in distant places, to which 1,535 general practitioners and some 2,000 nurses responded.
All applicant positions have been filled and they will be hired in February, something difficult to achieve before.
Regarding the new Cuban doctors, the Morelos press highlighted an act headed by President López Obrador at the María de la Luz Delgado General Hospital in Temixco on Sunday, where a group of specialists from the Caribbean country was welcomed.
There, they explained that before arriving in Mexico, the Cuban doctors had already participated in collaboration initiatives in hospitals in several countries, citing Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Pakistan, among others, and those in Morelos will join some of the hospitals that are part of the IMSS-Bienestar plan. (https://www.plenglish.com/news/2023/01/31/more-than-500-cuban-doctors-are-working-in-mexico/)
