Mexico expanded its health agreement with Cuba and will hire another 600 specialists from the island. Zoé Robledo, director of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (Imss-Bienestar), announced this Tuesday, the agreement was concluded with the Cuban Medical Services Marketer , responsible for selecting the group of toilets and defining the salary issue.
The contract is part of the Health Plan for Well-being implemented by the Mexican Government in 2022, with which it is intended to provide medical services to those who do not have social security. As part of this strategy, work spaces were also created for 27,398 retired doctors to work with the Imss.
The consultant for health issues Xavier Telloa graduate of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Unam), reacted to this announcement on his social networks: “Wouldn’t it be easier, I ask, simply to offer more decent salaries (90,000 net pesos/month) and with permanent contracts and a excellent benefit package?”, he questioned, referring to active Mexican doctors.
Last February, Tello warned the EFE news agency about hiring doctors from the Island, which represented, in his opinion, “a terrible prognosis of where we want to take health policies. (Cuban doctors) are taking away the possibility of have a decent job for Mexicans and they are not solving the basic problem, which is raising the level of Mexican medicine”.
The specialist in health issues described this arrival of Cuban doctors as a “patch” to fill the positions that Mexicans, due to low salaries and transfers to insecure areas, do not cover. “What (the Government of Mexico) has to do is inject resources, Mexicans should have higher pay and a better job offer. And what they want to do is continue to pay little and stigmatize them because they do not want to accept low-paid jobs.”
Zoé Robledo also mentioned that “another 188 Cuban health workers who were recruited in the national calls” will begin to provide services in April, without specifying the state to which they will be sent. With this, it is expected to have 1,429 specialists, who have been hired under the argument of providing care in remote areas of Mexico.
Last October, the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador launched a call to cover another 749 spaces with foreign specialists, in which health workers from the Island were also registered. As specified, selected physicians would be paid $2,600 per month.
Without becoming official, this amount would be the one that the Government of Havana will pocket for each one of 188 specialists on the Island, who in reality, as various organizations have denounced, only receive a small percentage.
According to data offered by the federal official, so far 610 Cuban specialists are working in 12 states. The agreement indicates that these physicians would offer consultation in remote areas, such as the Mountain of Guerrero, one of the most controversial points in Mexico due to the presence of organized crime groups.
For each one of the 641 specialists sent in the first group from Cuba, Mexico pays the Government of the Island 2,042 dollars per month, while the payment for each general practitioner is 1,722. In practice, Cuban doctors are only given a small stipend during the year they keep working.
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