The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, today reiterated his gratitude to the people and government of Cuba for sending doctors to this North American nation.
"We want to thank the people and the government of Cuba, because they are helping us by sending specialists that we do not have in our country," said the president during his usual press conference.
The head of state recalled that the neoliberal policy prevailing in Mexico for decades abandoned public education, especially at the higher level, and young people who wanted to study medicine were rejected on the pretext that they did not pass the entrance exam.
"The truth is that there was not enough budget and thousands were rejected. In the end, the result is that we do not have the specialists that the country requires," López Obrador emphasized, denouncing that in this eagerness to privatize the nation was left without the possibility of having more doctors.
We have been increasing the number of scholarships for these professionals and we are going to leave some 200 regional medical universities; however, they are not enough and that is why the Cuban government is helping us, he added.
According to what he said, at the beginning of his mandate he visited different hospitals that have been affiliated to the IMSS-Bienestar program for the federalization of healthcare services for people without social security (around half of the population), and he found that there was a lack of specialists.
"We want to be able to raise white flags in the states in September and say: there is a 100 percent supply of medicines, we already have general practitioners, there are already specialists. It is quite a challenge. And it is not Denmark, it will be better, because we have been working for a long time," the President predicted.