The medical community in Mexico has been fighting for several years to defend their labor rights, and trying to stop normalizing the humiliating practices embedded for decades in their training. But it was the murder of intern doctor Eric Andrade, 25, in Durango, and just four days earlier, on Monday, July 11, that of anesthesiologist Massiel Mexía, 38, in Chihuahua, when things took on a different tone: that of urgency and concern that any of them could be the next victim.
Eric Andrade was shot nine times in the back while working at the El Salto hospital, in the state of Durango. He was only two weeks away from finishing his social service, and on the afternoon of the attack he had told his fellow guard to take better care of other patients while he attended to a couple of men who had come drugged and violent to receive care. medical. His companion, according to Andrade’s family, was totally in shock a few minutes later, when he heard the shots and saw Eric on the ground.
The case of the anesthesiologist Massiel Mexía, murdered last Monday, July 11, in the municipality of Bocoyna, in the Sierra de Chihuahua, is still not very clear. State authorities have offered brief information about the case and Mexía’s family claims they are unaware of whether or not there is an investigation file and no one, more than 10 days after the murder, has given them official information about what happened. As happens in many of the cases like this, they have found out by Facebook and on television of the arrest and prosecution of a 19-year-old man who was allegedly the aggressor.
The State Prosecutor’s Office issued a statement informing that the alleged culprit has been linked to the process, who was arrested after being in the hospital, where he had been transferred to be treated after he was found, the day after the murder de Mexía, beaten and tied with tape in a place close to where the events occurred, in the town of San Juanito.
And it was also through social networks that Eric Andrade’s family found out what had happened on the afternoon of Friday, July 15, at the hospital in the town of San Pedro, in Durango. “They began to send me Facebook posts and messages of condolences began to arrive, before we could move to the place where everything happened and without anyone from the hospital, the university or any authority notifying us or telling us anything” says Suhey Andrade, Eric’s sister, who will also soon become a medical intern.
Eric Andrade received 3,600 pesos a month (175 dollars). It had a type b position, intended for interns who provide care in rural areas of more than 2,500 to 15,000 inhabitants “six days a week, with a schedule of seven hours of daily activities,” according to the Ministry of Health. Every day he traveled, together with a group of several doctors, in a van, on a journey that lasted an hour and a half, from Durango, the capital, to his workplace.
The social service in medicine under review
Cinthya Flores, president of the Mexican Association of Doctors in training (AMMEF), insists on the urgency of reviewing the conditions in which the social service of thousands of doctors in the country is carried out. The movement, of which she and hundreds of other health professionals are a part, has requested, among several other points, a reform of Rule 009, regarding health education. What is being asked for is nothing more than what the Mexican State would have to guarantee to students and professional medical personnel: security, in a country where violence prevails, and decent working conditions.
“The health system in Mexico is supported by students and that, administratively, is very convenient because we are interns and we do not receive a salary,” says Flores, trying to summarize the reason for the movement that has gained strength in recent weeks, after the wake of the murders of Andrade and Mexía.
Saúl Suazo, a ninth-semester medical student at the Juárez University in Durango, is part of that generation of health professionals who observe the panorama with terror. “It is painful and disturbing. The uncertainty that we have of being one step away from this stage (social service) and not knowing if we will be safe or not”, he says. “We want to make noise through marches, in honor of Eric, of course, but we also want the government to listen to us.”
The health system in Mexico is supported by students and that, administratively, is very convenient because we are interns and we do not receive a salary”
Cinthya Flores, president of the Mexican Association of Physicians in training (AMMEF)
The AMMEF keeps track of the complaints that occur in various parts of the country. Cinthya Flores has recounted the most common: threats from their superiors, sexual harassment, insecurity in the workplace, whose complaints are totally ignored by the health authorities and the universities to which these doctors belong in training. That is to say, the danger of violence prevails inside and outside their workplaces, they are abandoned by indifference.
Today the great LOBO family is mourning the sensitive loss of our student Dr. Eric David Andrade Ramírez.
We join in the sorrow of his family and send them our deepest condolences.Will always remember you! pic.twitter.com/KSBI05viei
– UAD Durango (@lobosuadmx) July 16, 2022
The responses to all these cases, both from the Government of the States of Durango, Chihuahua and the Federal Administration, is the same: “we are working to clarify the facts”, “this case will not go unpunished”. Condolences and condolences in communications on their official pages or social networks. However, if there is one thing that the families of Massiel Mexía and Eric Andrade agree on, it is the repeated silence, concealment and indifference of the local authorities, the universities, the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), and of a Mexican society that wakes up every day with a new murder, femicide or attack, which the corresponding authorities promise to solve.
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