A Baja California Sur state legislator has publicly condemned IMSS-Bienestar, Mexico’s public health system for the uninsured, after an infant died in the remote town of Vizcaíno because no ambulance was available to transport the baby to a hospital. State Rep. Teresita de Jesús Valentín Vázquez, of the ruling Morena party, raised the case in the BCS state congress and demanded answers about emergency medical response failures across the Mulegé municipality.
Vizcaíno sits roughly 350 kilometers north of La Paz along the Transpeninsular Highway, deep in one of the most sparsely populated stretches of the Baja California peninsula. The town and surrounding communities in the Mulegé region have long relied on a thin network of IMSS-Bienestar clinics and hospitals for basic medical care. Valentín Vázquez told fellow lawmakers that the infant’s death was a direct consequence of chronic underfunding and staffing gaps in those facilities.
Working Meeting Yields Transfer Unit Agreements
The legislator’s denunciation triggered a working meeting between state congress members and IMSS-Bienestar officials to review hospital conditions and emergency capacity in the Mulegé area. That session produced several concrete agreements. IMSS-Bienestar committed to creating dedicated medical transfer units at Mulegé hospitals, each staffed by a doctor, a nurse, and a trained vehicle operator. Officials also agreed to strengthen maternity care protocols and expand emergency training programs for health workers in the region.
No timeline was announced for when the new transfer units would begin operating. The agreements remain on paper for now, and local health workers have expressed skepticism about follow-through.
Health Workers Protest in La Paz
The congressional confrontation came the same day IMSS-Bienestar workers staged a protest outside the state government palace in La Paz. Members of the FINTRAS BCS union gathered on Tuesday, June 9, to demand better working conditions, medical supply restocking, and payment of overdue benefits. The workers said supply shortages and operational problems affect both staff and patients, and that similar protests have taken place in other states where IMSS-Bienestar operates.
El Sudcaliforniano, a La Paz daily, separately confirmed that poor IMSS-Bienestar services in Mulegé had been formally denounced in the state congress. For anyone living in or traveling through BCS’s interior, the Mulegé municipality, which stretches across a vast desert corridor from the Pacific coast to the Sea of Cortez, offers the fewest medical options of any region in the state.
First reported by Colectivo Pericú.