A group of 20 Cuban health workers, of the 806 that Mexico hired, were sent this Thursday to Acapulco, in the state of Guerrero, the area most devastated by Hurricane Otis. The doctors have been assigned to the Renacimiento hospital of the Mexican Social Security Institute (Imss), affected by the category 5 cyclone that, so far, has caused the death of 27 people. The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, ruled out this Friday the arrival of more doctors from the Island.
The Cuban ambassador to Mexico, Marcos Rodríguez Costa, reported through his social networks that the doctors sent are part of those who offered services in Tlaxcala and Hidalgo and that since their arrival, at midnight on Thursday, they undertook “together with their Mexican colleagues the work to serve the people. However, the hospital, whose ground floor was flooded, only restored the consultation service. For the moment, surgeries and specialty care are suspended.
To the state of Guerrero, for which Mexico initially hired 610 Cuban specialists, to treat patients in remote and violent places, where Mexicans did not want to go, in the end only 52 doctors from the Island were sent. Of them, neither the Mexican authorities nor the Embassy have given news after the hurricane.
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, ruled out this Friday the arrival of more doctors from the Island
In a first assessment, it was indicated that the regional general hospital number 1 Vicente Guerrero suffered damage to its infrastructure, so patients were transferred to other medical units. Meanwhile, the El Quemado hospital is operating normally this Friday and so are the other clinics in the region.
This Thursday, one day after Hurricane Otis made landfall in Acapulco with category 5 – the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale – and sustained winds of 260 kilometers per hour and waves of up to 10 meters, images of bodies without life in the streets, people looting businesses due to lack of food and luxury hotels destroyed. The opposition and the press have reminded López Obrador that in 2021 he made official the disappearance of the Natural Disaster Fund trust (Fonden), intended to help states and administrative entities affected by natural disasters.
Fonden resources were allocated to the reconstruction of public infrastructure and housing for the poorest population and to the rehabilitation of natural areas. The fund was managed through the Federation Expenditure Budget.
López Obrador argued that Fonden only served for the “publicity and corruption” of previous Administrations. However, according to the weekly Proceso, his Government withdrew more than 30,000 million pesos ($1,656,031,631) from those coffers between 2020 and 2021 to allocate it to other projects such as the Mayan Train or the purchase of vaccines against covid. -19.
The López Obrador Government, according to the same weekly, continued to provide cash reserves for natural disasters through a program in Ramo 23 – which is still called Fonden –, which is in charge of the Policy and Budgetary Control Unit of the Ministry of Finance with new rules for emergency response, the delivery of “immediate partial support”, the implementation of “reconstruction” programs and the contracting of insurance.
Fonden resources were allocated to the reconstruction of public infrastructure and housing for the poorest population and to the rehabilitation of natural areas.
Around 780,000 inhabitants suffered the ravages of Cyclone Otis, and approximately half a million were left without electricity supply and telephone networks. In the midst of the disaster, the president was mocked on social networks with an image in which he is seen inside a military vehicle stuck in the mud, in an unsuccessful attempt to get closer to Guerrero.
In the Senate, this Thursday, the Undersecretary of the Treasury, Gabriel Yorio González, said that 18,000 million pesos ($993,807,501) were guaranteed to deal with natural disasters like Otis. Hours later, the Undersecretary of Treasury Expenditures, Juan Pablo de Botton, explained to the deputies that they had 14,278 million pesos (788,433,187) from the missing Fonden to address the damage caused by the hurricane on the coast of Guerrero.
The newspaper El Universal published this Friday that Mexico made effective the collection of the Catastrophic Bond (Catbond) that it issued in 2020 through the World Bank (WB) for a total of 485 million dollars to cover risks associated with natural disasters due to Otis, but It does not offer details of the operation, nor how much of that money will be allocated to Acapulco.
#Important 🔴 Hurricane Otis made landfall in Acapulco, Guerrero as a category 5. An IMSS hospital was damaged by the strong winds. pic.twitter.com/S7lHWP7SZx
— Adela Micha (@Adela_Micha) October 25, 2023
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