Related Articles
-Editorial
Over time, medical services in the border cities are increasingly costly and unreachable for the low-income population. For those who don’t have access to health insurance on the north or south side of the border, it is expensive and almost unaffordable to receive quality medical care.
There are excellent doctors but they maintain high costs both in consultation and in treatments, even for many, studying medicine is no longer an aspiration to help others, but a search to obtain an attractive salary and earnings, reason why when we found out about a doctor in Mexicali who, besides being an excellent doctor, enjoys taking care of his patients at a very low cost because his main objective is helping those who have less, was a very pleasant novelty.
Dr. José Mazotti Flores, is a talented altruistic doctor from Hermosillo, Sonora, who completed his education at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The doctor made of Mexicali his home for the last 25 years and has worked in the health sector for 30 years. Twenty years ago he decided to open an office to see low-income population in the evenings, and since then, willingly, whoever the patient might be, his consultation is only for $100 pesos ($5.50USD).
In a small office, located in Colonia Roma in Rio Acaponeta #1019, almost on the corner of Montes de Oca in the city of Mexicali, a place that is filled with patients every day in search of care, the 57-year-old doctor offers consultation Monday through Friday from 4pm to 8pm.
“My vocation was to serve patients of scarce resources, since I started, even patients who I already know arrive and they are very humble people so I don’t charge them a consultation fee because I do it to help them. But now there are also patients who arrive in brand new cars and I treat them all the same, despite if they’re low-income people or not, just because they were referred,” he said.
The people of the surroundings say this doctor is a blessing, because it is not the affordable medical consultation that makes them return with Dr. José Mazotti over and over again, but the effectiveness of it, since the doctor precisely prescribes his patients with the right medication and they recover in a short period of time when they need it, so this has caused people to come from different places to see him for a consultation.
When interviewing Dr. Mazotti and asking him what motivated him to see patients for so little, he concluded: “Solely because when encountering a patient on the street and they thank me it fills me with satisfaction. Just with that, I feel happy. Not because I charged them or the consultation was free to them, but simply because they thanked me and said: “Dr. thanks to you, I got better. That means that I took good care of them. So the day they stop saying “hello” I’ll say: ¡I failed in something!”
