The Cuban doctors who arrived in the country are specialists in 29 fields and will work in 11 states.
This Monday, November 25, 199 Cuban doctors from 29 specialties arrived in Mexico to work in public hospitals in remote communities in 24 states, according to information provided by the Cuban ambassador, Marcos Rodríguez Costa.
Since 2002, the Mexican government has hired a total of 3,650 Cuban health workers who have represented a payment of more than 472 million pesos – until December 2023 – in salaries, lodging, transfers, and food.
This new group arrived at the Felipe Ángeles International Airport in Santa Lucía and, according to the forecasts, each of them will be assigned to different clinics and hospitals, mainly from the Social Security that operate under the IMSS Bienestar modality in entities that accepted the decentralization of health services, such as:
- Nayarit
- Guerrero
- Oaxaca
- Sonora
- Tlaxcala
- Colima
- Michoacán
- Veracruz
- Zacatecas
- Morelos
- Campeche
Last July, the IMSS announced the expansion of the agreement between federal authorities and the Cuban Ministry of Health to add another 2,700 specialists to the 950 who already worked here.
The institution then identified 282 hospitals in rural or marginalized areas that on average have 20 beds and four doctors, which means a lack of personnel that affects health services, where Cuban specialists in internal medicine, pediatrics, and emergencies will be channeled.
According to Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos, the company through which the island’s doctors who depend on the government of Miguel Díaz Canel are hired, since May 1963 when Cuba officially began international medical collaboration, more than 407 thousand health professionals and technicians, including 183 thousand 338 doctors, have carried out their mission of saving lives and improving health indicators in at least 164 countries, including Mexico.
Since 2018, the organization Prisoners Defenders has denounced the poor conditions in which Cuban doctors are hired around the world, as they do not receive payment directly, but rather through the island’s government, in addition to the long time they spend away from their homes.
A year later, the UN classified Cuban medical missions as forced labor and “modern slavery,” and in 2020, Human Rights Watch analyzed all the legislation and ratified this situation.
TYT Newsroom
