A Cuban doctor was shot to death at a hospital in a dangerous neighborhood on the outskirts of Mexico City, authorities said Monday.
The doctor, whose name was not disclosed, perished on Friday along with a nurse and another woman at a hospital in the suburb of Ecatepec.
The crime occurs amid criticism of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s plan to bring Cuban doctors to areas where there are no Mexican doctors available or where they do not want to work because they are too dangerous or remote.
The Cuban doctor murdered in Ecatepec had apparently been in the country for some time and was not part of the current program. However, his death raised questions about whether some areas of Mexico are too dangerous for Cuban doctors too.
A woman who identified herself on Facebook as the doctor’s sister said her name was Ernesto Oliva Legra.
The Attorney General’s Office of the State of Mexico, adjacent to Mexico City, reported that two armed men broke into the hospital at dawn on Friday and asked at the reception for a patient.
Unable to locate her, the individuals forced the receptionist to open the door to a medical area on the second floor, where they opened fire, killing the nurse and another woman, and injuring the doctor.
The doctor died of his injuries at another hospital. Local press reported that the second victim was a woman who was visiting a relative undergoing treatment.
Previously, gang members have stormed hospitals to kill injured rivals. Mexico has been suffering from a wave of violence against medical personnel.
In July, medical school graduates and other residents protested across the country against the shooting death that month of Erick David Andrade, a 24-year-old intern who was treating a patient in the state of Durango, in the North of the country.
Andrade was about to complete the “social service” required of all medical students before entering a residency or internship.
On July 11, an anesthesiologist was shot dead at her home in the state of Chihuahua.
In July 2021, a doctor was killed on a highway near Jerez, Zacatecas, apparently because she failed to stop at a drug lord’s roadblock. That same month two paramedics were killed while transferring a patient in that same condition.
Critics have filed legal challenges against the plan to hire more than 500 Cuban doctors, of whom more than 100 have already arrived in Mexico and are working in the states of Nayarit and Colima.
One of the lawsuits contends that the government has failed to demonstrate that Cuban doctors have the ability or training to work in Mexico, and that most of their salaries will end up in the Cuban government’s coffers.
This Tuesday, López Obrador defended the program and insisted that Mexico does not have enough specialists.
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