Mexico's hospital system is improving, president says in San Luis Rio Colorado

  SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. - Mexico is reversing a trend of decline in health care for the country's elderly and needy, said its president in a visit to this border city to dedicate a new hospital.

  Accompanied by a heavy security detail Thursday, Felipe Calderon was in San Luis Rio Colorado for about 40 minutes for the new Mexican Institute of Social Security clinic that actually has been in operation for two months.

  The Family Medical Unit - consisting of 10 exam rooms for family medicine, 10 for preventive medicine and one for medical diagnosis - will serve about 46,000 patients, relieving patient demand on the sole social security clinic that has been in service for nearly five decades.

  With rapid growth of the city in the past four years, Calderon said in remarks made at the dedication, the existing clinic was staffed with only two beds for every 1,000 residents of the border city who are eligible for health care through the institute, a government agency that provides various social services to pensioners and the needy.

  Calderon was accompanied in his visit by Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours Castelo, who had previously said the bed-to-patient ratio was actually lower, less than one bed per 1,000 patients.

  Calderon said that in 2007, the federal government began reversing the decline in care provided by the institute through spending on new hospitals and equipment around the country.

  The president said he or his family themselves have received health care or other services through the institute.

  "In my life, I have been a beneficiary of social security going back to childhood," he said. "They have operated on me two times in the institute, but that was for falling off a bicycle, it wasn't anything serious.

  "My mother has a widow's pension from social security; my brother is a obstetrician-gynecologist of social security, and he told me he used to have to do dozens of Caesareans in a day.

  "The good news," he added, " is that we were being forced to reverse that trend. Last year, we succeeded in increasing the number of beds for the beneficiaries of social security."