Reading according to pediatrics

By Edmée Pardo and Marilú Acosta

I discussed with Marilú Acosta my past text that speaks of the parallelism between recommending a book and prescribing a patient. She, who is a doctor and a writer, reminded me (or rather informed me) of the campaign to consult a pediatrician about which titles to read in the family, seeking to increase the average Mexican population that reads 1.6 books a year. And in that dialogue the first lines of this four-handed text were written in the air.

Indeed, in 2017 the campaign Read to be well is launched, using pediatricians as reading promoters. There is no better medicine than a story! They used to say (I think the current government believed it, that's why they didn't buy pediatric medicines, not even oncological ones). Go to your pediatrician, he will know how to help you. They said. I remember seeing the signs at truck stops. Pediatricians prescribing (recommending) books, as if pediatricians had time to read to their children and forgetting that adherence to (pharmacological) treatment does not exceed 50% in the best of scenarios.