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Health personnel in Mexico face a double threat in their fight against the pandemic. Inside hospitals they are the first line of containment against the virus, outside of them they are victims of threats and attacks by those who consider them to be sources of contagion .

In recent weeks, cases have multiplied across the country and the United Nations has demanded that the authorities "appropriate measures to protect them." In this regard, the Government has deployed Army units around hospital centers , recommended that workers "wear civilian clothes" when leaving the facility, and offered them free hotel rooms if they feel threatened in their neighborhoods.

Despite the fact that these types of attacks have also been registered in Europe or in countries such as Argentina and Colombia, in Mexico they have reached levels of unusual violence.

On April 1, nearly 150 residents of Axochiapan threatened to burn down the local hospital after learning that it was going to be used to care for Covid-19 patients . "We burned it, if it does not have the capacity to attend to what little there is here, do you think they will be able to attend to a contingency?" One of them claimed in statements to local media.

Finally, the security forces repelled the attack, but the choice of this hospital to attend to coronavirus cases worries even its own workers , who denounce having only 6 ventilators to attend to the 40,000 inhabitants of the municipality.

Six days after this incident, in Nuevo León, workers at the Sabinas Hidalgo General Hospital found the facilities "with damage to doors and windows caused by fire . " Once again the fear that Covid-19 patients would be treated encouraged the violent reaction of the local inhabitants. According to data from the National Council to Prevent Discrimination in Mexico (Conapred), from March 19 to April 19, there were 140 complaints of discrimination related to the virus throughout the country , 25% of which were made by health personnel.

In order to sensitize the population to this serious situation, the Government decided to invite Fabiana Maribel Zepeda, head of the IMSS Division of Nursing Programs, to the daily press conference held at the National Palace. "It hurts to talk about this, it hurts to talk about health workers, that we are also people and we have families (...) The uniform I wear, I have worn it for 27 years with great pride. Today we have taken it off to limit the damage to our person, "she explained visibly excited.

Among the events denounced by Zepeda, the assault on a nurse in Jalisco who was sprayed with water mixed with chlorine to prevent her from getting on public transport stands out. Something similar happened in Sinaloa, when a man threw bleach on a nurse. Rafael Ramírez, an IMSS nurse in Mérida, also reported that, while waiting for the bus after a long day of work, a couple of subjects threw several eggs at him before escaping on a motorcycle .

In San Luis Potosí, the assailants of nurse Sandra Alemán took violence to another level. According to the victim's complaint on his Facebook page, two minors threw coffee and soft drinks at him, shouting "Covid, don't come closer, culera!"; moments later they pounced on her and caused fractures in two fingers of her hand .

Claudia Hernández, a nurse from Durango, a person tried to get her off the road while pointing at her and shouting "Infected!" . Hernández recognized the aggressor as Alicia, a neighbor of the municipality, and, although she reported the facts, she was released in less than half an hour. At that time, according to Hernández: "She makes the comment that now we had been valid, that when the dog dies, rabies ends. She took out a gun from the trunk, from a black backpack she was carrying and threatened me ."

Questioned by these serious attacks, the undersecretary of the Ministry of Health, Hugo López-Gatell assured that: "What they show is a phenomenon that is natural but in no way justifiable , fear produces irrational reactions." With two weeks to reach the peak of the pandemic, with 11,633 infected and 1,069 deaths from Covid-19 in the country, Mexican health workers continue on the warpath despite the attacks and the risk of collapse in hospitals.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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