They are the first line of defense against the COVID-19 pandemic, but in parts of Mexico, doctors, nurses and other health workers are being harassed to the point that federal authorities have pleaded for Mexicans to show solidarity.
While tributes to courageous medical personnel putting themselves in the virus’ path circle the globe, Mexico and some other places have seen disturbing aggression born of fear.
Staff at a hospital in Guadalajara — Mexico’s second-largest city — were told to wear civilian clothes to and from work rather than their scrubs or uniforms, because some public buses refused to allow them to board.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Other medical personnel have reported attacks and this week someone threw flammable liquid on the doors of a new hospital under construction in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon.
“There have been cases, you could say isolated, but all outrageous,” Mexican Undersecretary of Health Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Monday night. “Fear produces irrational reactions — reactions that make no sense, have no foundation and have no justification when they have to do with respecting the dignity and the physical integrity of people.”
It also comes as the Mexican government has embarked in a massive recruiting drive to bolster the thin ranks of its public health system before the virus hits with its full force.
“It’s even more outrageous when it concerns the health professionals that we all depend on in this moment, because they are on the front lines facing this epidemic,” Lopez-Gatell said. “The declaration is of indignation and a demand that this not occur because it is completely punishable, sanctionable and won’t be allowed.”
Mexico has nearly 2,800 confirmed COVID-19 infections and 141 deaths.
Authorities were moved to speak out publicly, because the incidents have continued spreading. Harassment of medical personnel in Guadalajara became a daily occurrence in the past few weeks.
Edith Mujica Chavez, president of Jalisco state’s Interinstitutional Commission of Nurses, denounced the attacks including physical aggression, verbal harassment and even having bleach solutions thrown at nurses.
In a letter to Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro, her organization asked for help and public condemnation of the attacks.
“We all know we are potentially at risk in public health, but violence can never be tolerated, even though we are afraid of catching coronavirus,” the letter said.
“We have to maintain our mental health and share information so that they know nurses are not enemies of society,” it said.
A group of taxi drivers calling themselves “Code Red” in the city banded together to offer free or reduced-cost rides to health workers.
However, the attacks have not been limited to that city.
A nurse in the city of Merida wrote on Facebook of an attack.
“While I was waiting for my ride, two people on a motorcycle threw an egg at my uniform,” wrote Rafael Ramirez, who works at a public health clinic.
“I didn’t think these kinds of things happened in our city. I felt powerless not being able to do anything while they rode on laughing.”
“We don’t deserve it,” he wrote. “Am I afraid to go to work? Of course I am.”
In the state of Morelos late last month, residents of the rural community of Axochiapan protested outside a local hospital, which they heard might be used to treat coronavirus patients.
When the hospital director came out to say nothing had been decided yet, a man shouted that they would burn the hospital down.
The hospital attacked this week in Nuevo Leon had been turned over to the military to receive COVID-19 patients.
“To threaten the physical safety of medical personnel or to affect the functioning and operation of the hospital infrastructure dedicated in this moment to the health emergency puts at risk the capacity of response that the population requires,” said Victor Hugo Borja, director of medical services for Mexico’s public health system.
Mexico is not the only place seeing such harassment of medical personnel.
In Argentina, each night residents go out to their balconies or windows to applaud those working in the health system.
However, in one incident, a group of residents in an apartment building advised a doctor living there that she not be in the building’s common spaces or risk legal consequences.
They told her to “not touch door handles, stairway railings and to not be on the terrace.”
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