MEXICO

On January 13, leaders of the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) issued a statement criticizing the implementation of the Health Institute for Welfare (Insabi, for its acronym in Spanish) and highlighting the current medicine scarcity. In response, the government said that it is working on secondary provisions to enable the “correct” functioning of this entity by the end of 2020, while President Andrés Manuel López Obrador added that they plan to allocate resources to buy drugs worth over five billion dollars for the entity during 2020.

Pro-government senator Ricardo Monreal (Morena – ruling party) chimed in saying that they will do “everything necessary to improve the operation of the Insabi […] so that it is properly implemented and duly corrected in the case of human error.” Congressman Germán Martínez, the former head of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS, for its acronym in Spanish), requested that agreements be signed between the Insabi and the IMSS-Bienestar program to solve the operational problems detected so far.

In the face of increasing criticism from the opposition, AMLO announced plans to present a weekly report on health matters, including data on medicine supplies, the state of health facilities and the existing numbers of medical personnel. While waiting for the Insabi’s operating rules to be released, opposition party PAN will however present Congress with an alternative next week to “put an end to the disorder in implementation which is putting the lives of the population at risk.”