They propose to cut the budget for vaccination in 2023

The budget of the Vaccination Program will pass, if the deputies do not make modifications to the presidential proposal, from an amount of 30 thousand 314 million 344 thousand 022 pesos to one of 14 thousand 021 million 841 thousand 653 pesos. This represents a decrease of 55% in real terms, according to what was presented by the Treasury on September 8 in the Draft Budget of Expenditures of the Federation (PPEF) 2023. 
However, even with the cut, the budget allocated to vaccination would be double what was spent in 2021, when the amount approved for the Vaccination Program was 2,153 million pesos, although 7,152 million pesos were exercised. 
In 2020, the approved budget was 2 thousand 089 million and the exercised was 5 thousand 131 million (already with the COVID vaccination underway), also below the 14 billion that are foreseen in the PPEF 2023. 

Over the past three years, spending on vaccination has increased due to the need to purchase COVID vaccines. Judith Senyasen Méndez, coordinator of Health and Finance at the Center for Economic and Budgetary Research (CIEP), points out that much of the cut proposed for 2023 may be due to the fact that so many of those COVID vaccines will no longer be purchased. 
Even so, the cut to the Vaccination Program of the Ministry of Health occurs in a context of low immunization coverage, which has been falling in the country for more than a decade. 
According to data from the National Survey of Health and Nutrition (Ensanut) Continua 2021, coverage with a full scheme in children aged one and two experienced a first big drop between 2012 and 2018, when it went from 77.9% to 35.3%. For 2021, that coverage had a slight recovery: it achieved 35.8%. 

The problems with coverage coincide with the resurgence of diseases such as measles and tuberculosis. In Mexico, there were 196 cases of measles in 2020. And, according to the Epidemiological Bulletin of the Directorate of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Health, until July 2022 there had been 11,117 cases of respiratory tuberculosis, compared to 9,224 cases that were documented until the seventh month of 2021, an increase of 20%.
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Celia Alpuche, director of the Center for Research on Infectious Diseases of the National Institute of Public Health (INSP), and Tonatiuh Barrientos, director of the Center for Research in Population Health of the same organization, explain that there are several factors that have been combined for this drop in vaccination coverage.
Specialists point out that one factor is logistics. “An important aspect is that the vaccination schedule has grown in the country, biological ones were added, population groups (as in the case of the vaccine against the Human Papillomavirus for adolescents or influenza, which is given every year to children and adults), and what has been discussed in various forums, although it is not measured, it is the fact that the infrastructure and personnel to vaccinate have not grown at the rate required by universal vaccination as large as that of Mexico,” Alpuche said.
Marginal increases and more cuts
As for branches, the 12, of Health, has an increase of 2.9% in real terms, going from 193 thousand 948 million to 209 thousand 616 million. The Health Institute for Welfare (Insabi) would have a decrease in its budget of 1.2% and the Federal Commission for the Protection against Health Risks (Cofepris) a decrease of 0.7%. 
Another item that would have a cut is Branch 19, where the IMSS-Bienestar program is located, which has a decrease of 17.1% in the PPEF 2023. Meanwhile, the Fund of Contributions for Health Services (FASSA), of Branch 33, would have a slight increase of 1.7%. 
The new Decentralized Public Organism IMSS-Welfare, which was created by decree to give attention to the population without social security, replacing the Insabi, does not yet appear in the PPEF 2023. The ordinary IMSS has an increase of 9.8% and the ISSSTE one of 5.3%. 
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Original source in Spanish