In the News

As I was passing by the newsstands yesterday, these are the stories that were dominating the headlines...

PARENTS OF CHILDREN WITH CANCER BLOCK MEXICO CITY AIRPORT

Parents blockaded the entrance to Mexico City International Airport for six hours on Wednesday to protest a scarcity of chemotherapy medicines.  I asked Alejandro about the situation, and he told me that the Mexican health system is rife with corrupt employees getting kickbacks from companies that import pharmaceuticals.  President López Obrador, in his crusade to stamp out corruption, put an end to the practice but at the same disrupted the importation of many drugs, not just cancer therapies.  The President's intentions may be good, but he doesn't think things through before acting, according to Alejandro.  As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

IS THE CORONAVIRUS IN MEXICO?

A Chinese geneticist who works at the Polytechnic Institute in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, (right across the border from McAllen, Texas, is in quarantine after returning from a trip to visit family in Wuhan, China, the center of the outbreak of the coronavirus.  The Secretariat of Health has declared that there is no reason for panic.

Alejandro told me that the geneticist has since then been deemed to be uninfected with the virus.  The media have been overreacting, according to my friend.  All you hear on the TV and radio is the coronavirus as if the plague had descended upon Mexico.

And that's the news from Mexico.