The doctor, whose name has not been released, was killed on Friday along with a nurse and another woman at a hospital in the suburb of Ecatepec. The killing comes after criticism of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s plan to hire hundreds of Cuban doctors to work where Mexican doctors are unavailable or in areas they don’t want to work in because they are too dangerous or remote. The Cuban doctor killed in Ecatepec was not part of the current recruitment program, but his death raised questions about the plan’s safety. Prosecutors in the state of Mexico, which borders Mexico City, said two gunmen entered the hospital in the early hours of Friday morning and demanded a female patient at the front desk. Unable to locate her, the gunmen then 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 later died of his injuries at another hospital. Local media reported that the other victim was a woman who was visiting a relative who was undergoing treatment. Mexican gangs have been known to enter hospitals at gunpoint to subdue their wounded rivals, and Mexico has also seen a spate of violence against medical staff. In July, medical school graduates and residents demonstrated across the country to protest the July 15 shooting death of 24-year-old Erick David Andrade in the northern state of Durango as he treated a patient. He was days away from completing the mandatory term of low-paid “community service” required of Mexican medical school graduates before starting an internship or residency. On July 11, an anesthesiologist at a rural state hospital was shot to death in her home in the neighboring state of Chihuahua. In the same month, two nurses were killed while transporting a patient in the same violence-plagued northern state. Meanwhile, critics have filed injunctions against the plan to hire more than 500 qualified Cuban doctors, more than 100 of whom have already arrived and are working in the western states of Nayarit and Colima. The order claims the government has not proven the doctors have the ability or training needed to practice in Mexico and argued that most of the doctors’ pay may go to the Cuban government, not the health professionals themselves. On Tuesday, López Obrador defended the program, saying Mexico did not have enough experts. “It’s absurd, absurd for people to question the fact that Cuban medical specialists are coming to Mexico in solidarity with us,” the president said.
