September 9, 2025
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum clarified on Monday that her government will continue with the agreement it has with Cuba for doctors from the island to work in the Mexican public health system, which was started by her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024), to cover the shortage of healthcare personnel.
“We collaborate with Cuba on several issues. We will continue with the Cuban doctors; it is an established agreement, everything is in order, and we will continue with it,” the president said during her morning press conference.
The Mexican leader said that next year she will seek to promote, together with Cuban doctors, a program to treat diabetic foot ulcers because Cuba has a medication and a care regimen to prevent amputations that she said has been proven to be very successful.
“On this issue in particular, we are going to have greater collaboration with Cuba because it is the only country that has this medication and has had very good results,” she said.
Cuban doctors working in Campeche, foto: Zoé Robledo
Sheinbaum said that Cuba is one of the few countries willing to send doctors to Mexico.
“No Mexican doctors are being replaced, not one. The problem is that Mexico stopped graduating medical specialists for too many years, and that these specialists are the ones who help the poorest people in the country.”
“They have proven to be very good doctors, who after they graduated were willing to come to Mexico to the most remote places. We have an obligation to care for everyone,” she said.
She also said that once there are more Mexican medical specialists, no more Cubans will be needed.
In July 2024, the Mexican government, then headed by López Obrador, signed an agreement whereby 2,700 Cuban doctors moved from the island to Mexican territory.
The government justified the hirings because Mexico has 2.4 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants, higher than the Latin American average of 2 per 1,000, but lower than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 3.5, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).
Last February, Sheinbaum argued that “the training of medical specialists in Mexico ceased due to a government decision” during the “neoliberal period” because the number of students admitted to universities to study medicine was reduced.
The president then asserted that the training of resident doctors in Mexico has already more than tripled, from 5,999 in 2011 to 18,799 in 2025.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English