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In most of the world, medical staff have been lauded as heroes for their response to the coronavirus pandemic. But in Mexico, they are facing violent attacks and have been wrongly accused of spreading the disease.
According to Mexico's National Council to Prevent Discrimination, at least 44 attacks against medical personnel have been registered across the country since mid-March. The types of attacks vary but include nurses and doctors being splashed corrosive liquid onto their faces and being struck on their bodies.
Authorities say the attacks are likely motivated by rumors that medical personnel are responsible for spreading the virus throughout Mexico.
On Friday, three nurses, all sisters, were found dead with signs of strangulation in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila. Officials say it's an apparent triple murder and two or three criminals might have been involved but no arrests have been made.
Officials now are investigating the crime but said the motive is unclear. They said there is no evidence so far suggesting this was because of their jobs in the health sector.
Javier Guerrero, a top official for Mexico's main public health service IMSS in Coahuila, said the murders "happened at a moment when our health workers are the most important element to face the health crisis."
Weeks earlier, a health worker was doused with bleach when she, with her medical uniform, walked dogs on a street near her house in Guadalajara. At the time, she heard an inaudible scream behind her, and when she turned back, something was splashed on her face, burning her neck and blurring her vision.
Another nurse named Sandra described in a facebook post that she was hit in the face by a woman and her two children when she left a coffee shop on her way to a hospital with her white uniform on. She fractured two fingers on her right hand from defending herself.
"What's wrong with you, Mexico? We're just trying to go to work. I care for you, but you don't care for me. No more attacks on health workers!" she wrote in the post.
Now, to avoid being a target, many health workers have to change out of their uniforms when they travel to and from work.
However, they have been targeted by trolls on social media, and some of them have complained that they're denied service in restaurants and supermarkets, forced out of buses and metro carriages, and have even been barred from their own homes.
A woman was reported by The Guardian to have been forced from her home in the village of Lo de Marcos after she ended an eight-hour shift attending to suspected coronavirus patients in a hospital. She described that the road into her home village was blockaded and only with the police escort was she finally able to get back home, but only to collect her belongings and leave the village.
She now stays with her colleagues from the hospital since she has nowhere else to go.
"We don't need to be clapped for and no one needs to give us flowers. Just let us do our jobs without the fear of being attacked," the health worker who was splashed by bleach said to the Mexican public.
Mexico now has a total of 29,616 confirmed cases and 2,961 deaths. However, the government has said the real number of infections is significantly higher and that deaths are also under-counted. The country's health ministry said coronavirus transmissions are expected to peak this week.
(CGTN)
