Doctors who treated COVID run out of places in CDMX

“After we spent two years treating patients with COVID-19 and the president promised that we would not be out of work when the pandemic ended, the truth is that we are unemployed and they left us out of the call to hire health personnel. They only included specialists,” said Martín Osorno, a general practitioner who worked in imss clinics and temporary hospitals during the health emergency. 
This Tuesday, May 24, the federal government opened the call to hire only doctors with specialty, for whom it has 13,765 places available. But, in effect, there is none for general practitioners. 

👩🏽 ⚕️👨🏾 ⚕️🧑🏻 ⚕️ #ContrataciónPersonalMédico #FamiliaIMSS
National Call 2022 of the National Day of Recruitment and Hiring of Doctors and Specialist Doctors.
🔗 Consult the bases of the call in https://t.co/MpEFdGA6nH pic.twitter.com/BXgAHATHBQ
— IMSS (@Tu_IMSS) May 25, 2022

In fact, Zoé Robledo, director of the IMSS, said, during the president’s morning conference, that “with respect to general practitioners the country is quite covered”, it is in specialist doctors where there are shortages. 
A group of general practitioners, who are joining after being out of work at the IMSS, and who they say are made up of almost 250 colleagues, all from the capital of the country, what they are told is that there is no budget right now to give them work. 
“The union secretary of delegation 35, of the IMSS in Mexico City, told me that it will be very difficult to be hired because before the pandemic there were 40 general practitioners in the delegation and that number rose to 300 with the pandemic, so there is no budget available to give us a job that we were promised,” said David Ibarra, a general practitioner who treated COVID-19 patients at clinic 13 in Azcapotzalco; and to whom on April 15 they announced that there would no longer be a temporary contract for him.  

In the same situation of unemployment is Elibeth Saldaña, who entered the IMSS, on May 14, 2020, to attend COVID patients. She was admitted to the temporary hospital that was set up at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.
“I entered the day after they inaugurated it and by June I had already been infected, although I did not have a serious condition. But we did take risks, we did try hard and then they just told us that the contract had ended and now they do not consider us in the calls when they had told us that we would not be out of a job.” 
Saldaña also went to talk to the secretary of the union delegation, in his case the 36th, and the answer was the same: there is no budget for general practitioners. 
“Although they had already told us that, we thought they were going to include us in the call.. Even last Thursday we came to the National Palace to deliver a petition, requesting just that, that they give us employment, “explains Elibeth Saldaña. 
Lack of nursing staff
Rafael Lozano, one of the main authors of the study published in The Lancet, Measuring the availability of human resources for health and its relationship with universal health coverage for 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2019, said, in an interview with Animal Político, that in the case of Mexico what is most lacking is nursing personnel. 
“In Mexico it is estimated that for 2019 there were 26.6 medical workers and 57.7 nursing workers per 10,000 inhabitants, a figure that if compared with the expected rate to reach a health coverage of 80%, results in an excess in the medical staff of 73,262 and a deficit of 161,500 in the nursing,” Lozano, who is a professor at the University of Washington, in the Department of Health Measurement Sciences; and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
 Although he talks about that surplus of doctors, of which he says the analysis of whether they are generals or specialists was not made, he specifies that there are three states where there is a deficit: in Chiapas there are 3,100 missing; in Oaxaca, 530 and in San Luis Potosí, 450. On the other hand, in Mexico City there are about 19 thousand left over. 
Andrés Castañeda, coordinator of the Collective of Doctors in Training and member of the organization Nosotrxs, specifies that it is possible that there are enough general practitioners in the country, each year about 15 thousand graduate from universities, but that does not mean that they have work or places. 
When the general practitioners interviewed are asked if they would be willing to change residence entities to have a job, all three indicate that they depend on being assured of a stable job, a good salary and the adequate conditions of security and supply of supplies to be able to carry out their work. 
“I want to work yes, but I have the right, like any worker, to say this proposal does not suit me. No I’m going to go to squares where I know you can be killed or that you are forced to attend to members of organized crime, if the work involves my life, I would not leave,” david Ibarra warned.
Failed attempt
During the morning conference of the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, it was reported that from 12 o’clock on Tuesday, May 24, medical specialists could enter the platform of the call to register, see the available places and apply for a job. 
However, a couple of hours later, on social media some doctors who tried to register complained about the service.
A doctor who interviewed Animal Político pointed out that until 8:30 at night he had only been able to register, but the platform would not let him pass that phase.
 
What we do at Animal Político requires professional journalists, teamwork, dialogue with readers and something very important: independence. You can help us keep going. Be part of the team.
Subscribe to Animal Político, receive benefits and support free journalism.#YoSoyAnimal

Original source in Spanish

Related Posts

Add Comment