CAMPECHE, Mexico – In recent weeks, thousands of public school teachers have lined up outside schools and hospitals in this southern state as Navy helicopters buzzed in the sky carrying a precious cargo sent exclusively to them by the president of Mexico: Covid vaccines -19.
The government’s own guidelines require that hospital frontline staff and seniors in Mexico’s most affected cities be injured first. But teachers in rural Mexico are a key constituency.
Critics of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador say that vaccinating teachers before all doctors is the latest evidence of how the leftist president is making vaccination policy in a country with the world’s third highest official Covid-19 mortality rate, close of 180,000. And instead of having state health officials leading the effort, according to the usual protocol, the government of López Obrador is using employees from his welfare arm, “Servants of the Nation”, recognizable by the vests they wear with the national emblem from Mexico.
Campeche is one of several key states that hold intermediate elections in June. Research shows that the Morena de López Obrador party has a chance to overthrow the former PRI, which has governed Campeche since the late 1920s. Although many countries have prioritized teachers for vaccination programs during the coronavirus pandemic, they generally do not are ahead of health professionals.
Inside hospitals, health workers were furious that the government was inoculating teachers while nearly half of the state’s doctors and nurses were still waiting.