The latest group of 200 Cuban doctors arrived in Mexico on August 21st. They will be working in rural areas.
By 14ymedio
HAVANA TIMES – With the recent arrival of 200 Cuban doctors there are now almost 600 from the island sent to Mexico in August. Two similar groups of 200 and 199, respectively, landed on August 2nd and 8th.
The doctors are met at the air terminal by diplomatic personnel and agents of the National Immigration Institute. Afterwards, they are transported in official vehicles to Mexico City, from where they depart to other parts of the country.
According to the agreements signed between the two countries, the Cubans have been hired by the Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador administration to fill positions in rural hospitals. These groups that arrived in August will join the 950 doctors that have arrived in the country since 2022, a figure that Mexico expects will reach 5,000, following the extension of the bilateral collaboration agreement, announced at the end of July.
The amount paid to the Cuban government for each doctor and the percentage that will go to the physicians has not been disclosed.
The arrival of the doctors coincided with the Cuban Minister of Public Health, Jose Angel Portal Miranda’s visit to Mexico. The official met with his Mexican counterpart, Jorge Alcocer. A statement issued by the Cuban ministry reported the meeting, aimed at “strengthening collaboration in health matters”.
Alcocer is the highest-ranking official to receive Portal Miranda, albeit in a discreet way, a month before President Lopez Obrador hands over power to Claudia Sheinbaum. He was also received at the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) by Alejandro Calderon Alipi, general director of Health Services of IMSS-Bienestar, which is the institution taking in all the Cuban doctors sent to Mexico since 2022.
None of the Mexican authorities made any statement on the matter or officially announced their meeting with the island’s envoy. On the other hand, the Ministry of Public Health assures in its statement that in the meeting with Alcocer, they evaluated the progress of the collaboration in health matters, “which in the last period of work has been strengthened, consolidated and increased, reaching not only the health care area but also the teaching and regulatory field”.
In the same statement, they boasted about the actions they have carried out “jointly”, without mentioning any of them, and assure that “the results that have been achieved” are proof of the will to continue working to “promote cooperation in health in different areas”, in spite of “obstacles and limitations”, which they did not provide in detail either.
Cuba’s ambassador to Mexico, Marcos Rodriguez, also alluded in a tweet to talks on the “cooperation of medical specialists” and the “production of medicines and shared interests”.
In other activities, Portal Miranda participated in the XI Pan American Conference for the Harmonization of Pharmaceutical Regulation, where he ratified Cuba’s “willingness” to “put at the service of the Pan American Health Organization and all the countries of the region, its technical capabilities and experience in the production of medications, biotechnological products and vaccines”.
In his speech, from the central building of the Mexican Foreign Ministry, which served as the venue for the meeting, Portal said that on the island “in the face of external limitations”, they have learned that the most secure resources they can have are those they are capable of producing on their own.
These claims about the self-sufficiency of medications conflict with the shortage of basic medications in Cuba, which has already reached a deficit of up to 70%, according to the regime’s own acknowledgement in July.
Even so, his words were reflected in the official press, such as Cubadebate, which on Wednesday stressed that the region must “move out of the technical field and reach public policies that promote regional cooperation and support the right to health for all”.
What is a fact is that the rapprochement with the Island shown by the Lopez Obrador Administration, which has included oil deliveries to Cuba, especially with the crisis unleashed after the elections in Venezuela, will continue with his successor.
Translated by LAR for Translating Cuba.
Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.
