AMLO says Mexico lacks doctors, but health experts have other data

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Fernando Gabilondo former director of the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition “Salvador Zubirán” affirmed that there are 52 thousand unemployed doctors in the country.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador‘s announcement about the hiring of 500 Cuban doctors aroused voices in protest that argue that there is enough personnel in the country to cover that demand.

The questioning of health workers who were hired during the pandemic, and who later accused that their contract was not renewed, has also been put on the table.

One of the voices that expressed this was Fernando Gabilondo, who was director of the “Salvador Zubirán” National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition, and who referred to the subject in an interview with Joaquín López-Dóriga.

“The fact that doctors are needed is that they are not hired. What they did in the pandemic is that they hired many doctors, they did not give them a benefit, and they terminated their contract, ”he commented for Grupo Formula.

Dr. Gabilondo pointed out that at the international level these actions of taking doctors to other countries have been referred to as human trafficking or exploitation, since, for example, they do not receive all that is charged for their services.

He said that only in Nutrition in February of this year 220 highly specialized and specialized doctors graduated, figures to which must be added what happened in other institutes and other highly specialized hospitals.

He also charged that there are 52,000 unemployed doctors, who are those who were left out of the national residency exam.

Fernando Gabilondo questioned whether the credentials of the doctors who will be hired will be known or whether they have the corresponding certifications to practice in Mexico.  

“It is truly sad that instead of improving medical care, which is very deficient at the country level, now they bring people who do not have the capacity to adequately care for many diseases in Mexico.”

According to data from the Health Institute for Well-being (Insabi), during 2021, 125,000 health professionals were recruited, of which nearly 20,000 were authorized to care for the health emergency due to COVID in Mexico.

However, since the beginning of 2022 sector workers have protested and accused that their contract was not terminated, or not renewed, losing that source of employment.

At the beginning of the administration, the Secretary of Health, Jorge Alcocer, reported that there were 270,600 general practitioners in the country, but there was then a deficit of 123,000 general practitioners and 72,000 specialists in Mexico; He accused that the shortage had its origin in the fact that medical schools rejected more people than those who entered said institutions.

Mexico Daily Post