Medical Tourism Revisited with the Addition of Mega Gangs and Culture Wars
Claudewell S. Thomas, MD, MPH, DLFAPA, is an established psychiatrist who is currently retired ,, He received his medical degree in 1956 at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and specializes in social psychiatry, public health psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Thomas was board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry... more
A group of 4 from South Carolina traveled to Matamoros. Mexico by way of Brownsville Texas to obtain cosmetic surgery for the matriarch of the group who is 50. They ran afoul of a gang war in Matamoros leaving two dead and the others traumatized. Cosmetic tourism isn't the same offspring of medical tourism of just ten years ago, described in an earlier blog. In the proper centers techniques are modern and practitioners certified However drug cartels and police corruption make a minefield for shoppers.
There are three levels of police in Mexico. One local, one federal local, and one Federal State Police department like our FBI. The first two may be quite corruptible, the last much less Brownsville is 65%black and bedeviled by poverty. The route to Matamoros for cheap goods and pharmaceuticals is well traveled but black gangs and. Mexican gangs are at war internally and externally.
The South Carolina group was armed but unprepared for the war encountered. Matamoros means kill moors and should have warned of a racist element.
The Mexican government has expressed its regrets and the cartel has apologized indicating the magnitude and importance of tourism. If the GOP assault on abortion, Medicare and Medicaid type programs as well as the assault on physician practice and education succeeds more of the poor and more of the elderly may partake of the practice.
