Associations and colleges of doctors in Mexico spoke out this week against the announcement by the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), which plans to hire more than 500 Cuban doctors to cover the “shortage of specialists” in the country, considering it an offense toward national professionals, many of whom are unemployed.
In a statement signed by the leaders of 30 groups of specialists, they stressed that in Mexico “there are doctors with guaranteed competence,” and some of them “unemployed or possibly employed with very low wages or in areas of extreme insecurity,” who have been unfairly overlooked by “privileging foreign doctors.”
AMLO announced Monday that on his trip to Cuba last week, he agreed to hire more than 500 doctors from the island to address the shortage of personnel in the most vulnerable areas of Mexico.
For years, the Cuban government has sent thousands of its doctors to different countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe as part of its international cooperation policy.
In 2020, Cuba sent 585 doctors to Mexico to support the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, the Mexican professionals complained that the Cubans lack the endorsement of Mexico’s professional associations, and that their intervention “has not represented a benefit for the attention of our population, and it is a serious lack of equity.”