Mexican president vows to improve health care

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Monday that he is determined to deliver improvements to Mexico’s public health system in the near future.

“I have set myself the goal, the challenge, to improve all that makes up the public health system, and I’m going to achieve it,” he said in Villahermosa, capital of his native state of Tabasco, where he traveled for the inauguration of Gov. Adan Augusto Lopez Hernandez.

Lopez Obrador, sworn-in Dec. 1 for a six-year term, described the current state of health care in dire terms.

“Abandoned hospitals, without doctors or medications. Corruption. A very lamentable situation,” he said.

He went on, however, to express confidence that his administration will be able to fulfill all of the commitments it has made.

“We have not lost impetus and many actions are already in progress to end corruption and use all of that money that previously went into the gutter of corruption for the well-being of the people,” Lopez Obrador said.

During his first weeks in power, Lopez Obrador has ordered an increase of 16.21 percent in the minimum wage, halved the federal sales tax in cities and towns on the border with the United States and set in motion a project for a new railway to spur economic development in southeastern Mexico.

The leftist likewise slashed his own salary by 60 percent and put the $218.7 million presidential airplane up for sale.

Lopez Hernandez was one of five members of the president’s Morena party to win governorships in the July 1 elections.