Cuban doctors assigned to Nayarit where they were received by López Obrador.   Photo / PL

By Roberto Morejón

The first group of Cuban doctors hired by Mexico to provide services in areas where poverty reigns, far from urban areas, is already in the northwestern state of Nayarit, where more than 69,000 people over three years old speak some indigenous language.

Thanks to an agreement signed between the respective governments, the Cuban doctors, the majority of them specialists, will exceed 500, assigned, as in Nayarit, to attend to rural and low-income populations.

For those who lack medical insurance and require, above all, specialties, the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he is willing to hire these professionals in Cuba or Europe.

Health is not a matter of ideologies, he reiterated. This is a principle that has not been digested in sectors of the opposition, which has been very active since López Obrador's willingness to fill vacancies for these services in regions where local doctors have refused to go, alleging remoteness and difficult conditions.

The Ministry of Health states that Mexico has a deficit of 200,000 doctors. Those who do not have the money to hire one from a private clinic understand much better the President of the nation, who is determined to defend the sovereignty of the country, as exemplified by his appeal to this assistance.

For the Cuban doctors who have arrived in Nayarit, it is not unusual for them to go to perform their duties a few hours after their arrival in the country.

With an internationalist tradition marked since 1963, when health cooperation with other countries began in Algeria, the professionals in white coats from the largest of the Antilles shine for their efficiency and cordial treatment of their patients.

Their selflessness, altruism and selflessness are more than proven, as many of the inhabitants of the western Mexican state of Nayarit, where the first group is already located, will attest.

One of them told a journalist, according to a newspaper: "We come to work, not to talk.

 So did another 700 Cuban doctors who worked in Mexico during the first stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, and whose participation was crucial, according to the newspaper La Jornada, to avoid the collapse of health care services.

 Like them, the new workers sent by Havana are ready to give their all for the benefit of Mexicans' right to health.