Rosarito will soon see the construction of its first ISSSTE Family Medicine Unit, set to break ground in October, officials announced last week.

The news came from Martí Batres Guadarrama, director general of the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE), during President Claudia Sheinbaum’s morning press conference on Tuesday, September 2. Batres said six new clinics will open this year, with construction beginning on 16 more, including another Family Medicine Unit in Tecate, Baja California.

The expansion is part of a national plan to strengthen ISSSTE’s capacity and provide more timely, dignified care for its beneficiaries. In Rosarito, more than 4,500 federal employees and retirees depend on ISSSTE, but until now they have lacked a proper medical facility. The new clinic will be built in Ejido Mazatlán, a working-class neighborhood, and is expected to ease years of frustration among beneficiaries.

Local teachers’ unions played a decisive role in pushing the project forward. Hugo Monroy Rubio, municipal coordinator of the CNTE, noted that the effort took years of petitions and persistence. “It was a long struggle,” he said, recalling how requests were personally handed to then-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador during visits to Baja California. Rosarito’s mayor, Rocío Adame, also carried a petition to Mexico City earlier this year, returning with assurances that the project would finally move forward.

Monroy emphasized the urgency of the project, criticizing current conditions where ISSSTE services in Rosarito are limited to a small rented office. “It is unacceptable that medical care has been given in a two-square-meter cubicle,” he said. “With this clinic, state workers and their families will finally receive the dignified attention they deserve.”