“If we are short of doctors, we will bring them from any country in the world, but we want health centers and hospitals to have doctors,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Oaxaca a few months ago.
Estimates of the deficit vary. In 2022, Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer said there was a shortage of 33,832 general practitioners and 154,786 specialists. In February 2023, the head of the General Directorate of Quality and Health Education (DGCES), José Luis García Ceja, pointed out that Mexico needed 200,000 general and specialist doctors to offer health services to people without social security in marginalized areas of large cities or difficult to access in rural areas.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that Mexico has 2.4 doctors and 2.8 nurses per 1,000 inhabitants, when the average is 3.4 only in the first case.
Results of the calls
To fill vacancies for specialist doctors, general practitioners and nurses, IMSS-Bienestar has launched at least 10 calls for applications, including one to attract foreign doctors.
But since the gap is wide, it has also called for specific competitions for resident doctors (recently graduated from a specialty) and even retirees, in addition to holding an event called “draft” for hiring personnel.
The Ministry of Health estimated that there was still a shortage of 33,832 general physicians, and by the end of that year, 10,365 had been hired, barely a third of those required. As of December of that year, there were 340,105 health professionals hired.
He also calculated that there were missing 154,786 specialist doctors to comply with international recommendations 230 doctors per 100,000 inhabitants. But in the same period only 13,525 more have been incorporated, less than 10%.
According to official data from the Institute, in five years of this six-year term the increase in the hiring of general practitioners has been 30%, going from 34,000 in 2018 to 44,365 in 2023.
The The number of nurses increased from 178,000 to 212,000, while the number of specialists increased from 70,000 to 83,525.
