By Roberto Morejón
As part of his government's plans to improve health services, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is promoting a new stage of vaccination, using antigens from Cuba and Russia.
The Mexican government has the goal of applying more than 35 million vaccines against influenza and almost 19.4 million against Covid-19 during the cold season.
The free procedure already initiated is aimed at specific groups, such as the population over 60 years of age, pregnant women and people with ailments from five years of age onwards.
To deploy such preventive campaigns, the Mexican government acquired millions of doses of the Abdala vaccine, one of the three vaccines developed and approved in Cuba.
Mexican health authorities had information about the trials and efficacy of the Abdala vaccine, administered to millions of children born in this Caribbean nation.
It is an anticovid formula with an effectiveness of more than 90 percent, which contributes to the fact that it is based on a model used in other vaccines, since the largest of the Antilles has a wide capacity in this field.
After analyzing the documentation, COFEPRIS, the Federal Commission for the Protection of Health Risks, approved the antigen, and experts publicly reported Abdala's population effectiveness and high stability capacity.
Despite these assurances, conservative sectors and certain press questioned, without evidence, the efficiency of the Cuban injectable, in what the Mexican government described as a disinformation campaign.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador surprised his audience when, in one of his press conferences, he applied the fourth dose of Abdala and another one against influenza.
He was emphatic in urging his compatriots not to be misled, as he emphasized that all vaccines applied in his country undergo a quality test.
It should be pointed out that due to the U.S. blockade, it has been difficult for Cuban scientists to find supplies in third countries, an obstacle that prevents immunizers such as Abdala from being more widely marketed.
Even so, with the anti-Covid vaccines, HeberFERON, for the treatment of skin cancer, the anti-inflammatory Jusvinza and Heberprot-P, for diabetic foot, among other successes, Cuba keeps the name of its scientists and technicians high.
