Purpose:

This work estimates the availability and distribution of medical professionals in Mexico as a core resource of the health care team within the perspective of universal health as a right and with a care model based on APS-I as well as the training requirements which need to be addressed by higher education institutions.

Methodological design:

Information is processed from secondary, international, and national sources to assess the sufficiency, distribution, and challenges for training within the framework of a universal health policy.

Results:

The availability rate of medical professionals shows large gaps to reach similar values as in OECD countries and at the current rate, there is a shortage of these professionals. The training trend contributes to the difficulty of reaching the necessary sufficiency in addition to showing the exhaustion of a repeatedly questioned training model.

Research limitations:

It is necessary to analyze data about other health professionals to expand the scope of information regarding the needs of the health sector as a whole.

Findings:

The required number of university-trained medical professionals will hardly be obtained. Moreover, availability in the country is exacerbated in the states with the greatest deficiencies. Universities have the challenge of training medical professionals to be incorporated into a health care model based on APS-I.

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