“They forget the first right of a patient, which is to be treated wherever he is, and for this reason we had to resort to contracts with ...
“They forget the first right of a patient, which is to be treated wherever he is, and for this reason we had to resort to contracts with foreigners”, said Dr Jorge Alcocer Varela, Mexico’s Health Secretary, at a recent press conference. press conference.
The Cuban doctors’ announcement sparked outrage from many Mexican doctors, who said the problem was not a lack of doctors or an unwillingness to work in rural communities, but the life-threatening conditions in which they must work. .
“It was an ideological and political decision,” said Dr. Germán Fajardo Dolci, director of the faculty of medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, of the decision to recruit Cuban doctors. “It is not a technical, scientific or rational decision, from the point of view of the management of a health system.”
Dr. Fajardo Dolci said personal safety is the number one concern for many doctors. “It’s a huge concern across the profession,” he said.
Last July, a doctor was killed with a machete outside his home in Puebla state, according to local news reports. In January, another doctor was shot dead in the state of Chiapas during an armed robbery. And in April, gunmen shot and killed a doctor in Coahuila state while operating on a patient, according to local reports.
Escalating violence has also made life more difficult for residents, health care experts say.
In the community of Guajes de Ayala, in the mountains of the western Mexican state of Guerrero, violence drove out a nurse, leaving the dispensary without medical staff to care for nearly 1,600 residents of the region.
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