An assessment of the healthcare situation among the immigration caravan in Tijuana.
I am a nursing student and work at a large hospital in the San Diego area. I am accustomed to providing healthcare to homeless and destitute people. I see first hand the affects that the lack of hygiene can have on an otherwise healthy person. The situation among the immigrants is teetering on the edge of a healthcare crises. We are going into flu season and I can say without a doubt that many of these migrants will not only catch it, but will likely overwhelm the overburdened Tijuana healthcare system if something isn’t done.
I went to see what kind of healthcare was being provided. I came to find that healthcare isn’t even being discussed, basic human needs are yet to be provided. They don’t even have an area to wash their hands. There are only 20 portable bathrooms for thousands of people. A girl with what looked like chickenpox was laying with the general population.
The process began today to move migrants from makeshift shelters near the border to a more permanent one about 30 minutes south of the border. It is a covered location and is walled off from the community in which it resides. Those are positive benefits but many migrants are resisting because it’s relatively far from the border where they currently occupy.
These make-shift shelters seemed more like a dump that smelled of human excretions and sounded like a choir of coughs and sneezes than shelters. They are surrounded by a police and military presence that I’ve only seen around the US Interest Section in Cuba when was I was there in 2014.
To move these migrants to the new shelter called Barretal they are convinced to get onto buses that are titled, “Especial.” Barretal is in a typical Tijuana neighborhood and has 10 foot concrete walls surrounding it with large rooms built into it. The migrants that don’t want to be confined in the compound loiter on the surrounding streets doing nothing. Literally nothing. The entrance of the compound is heavily militarized and there is a steel door manned by two volunteers who check armbands that are issued upon registration, the only form of organization that I saw.
It is in the large rooms built into the wall of the compound that the migrants are housed. They have one room for single males, another for couples, and on the opposite end and passed another checkpoint where a special arm band is required is the room for for families and single women. It is a rudimentary system, conditions that make the lowest standard of living in Tijuana look opulent but it’s the best they can do in that building.
Besides providing shelter from the elements it does nothing to contain an outbreak.
The City of Tijuana, known for its laidback nature, corruption, and nightlife has pulled together to try to respond to this crises the best it can. It has provided parks, garnered volunteers, and managed to keep hundreds of idle middle-aged men from causing too many problems. The city can hardly fix their sewer system, let alone manage an international immigration crises.
This crises is on the verge from turning into an epidemic. Flu season is upon us and if it spreads within this large and mobile population of migrants Mexico won’t have a humanitarian crises on its hands, it will have an epidemic that could overwhelm Tijuana’s weak healthcare system. It isn’t difficult to come up with a scenario where whatever sickness takes hold in these unsanitary conditions makes it across the US border. The daily immigration of thousands of people into the US provides any pathogen perfect transportation.
Last year the flu affect San Diego county especially hard. If I was in a position of public heath in San Diego I would be very involved in making sure basic healthcare needs were taken care of among this population.
Very little was being done to improve this situation. They seem only concerned with keeping this group segmented and under control. Worthy goal, yes. Is it close to enough? No. I saw a military presence there that I’ve only seen in Mexico at the height of Los Zetas power in Tamaulipas.
USA Today reports that the Mexican government and UN are aware of the high infection rates among the migrants, but in my several hour stay I didn’t see one UN official. The Pena Nieto government has demonstrated that they can respond to crises before in the advent of the Mexico City earthquake and Hurricane Patricia. In the final days of his government he has decided to abstain from responding with the exception of making Tijuana feel like a city on martial law. There were a few civilian government officials from the city, state, and federal government, but they seemed to even struggle to know what was going on. The only healthcare available was a couple of loaded pickup trucks from Mexico City with enough supplies for 500 or so people. Not 6,000. To fill this void, I saw one local organization provide help, a local private hospital, SIMNSA, which was providing blankets. Better than nothing I suppose, but it won’t do anything to solve the thousand of sick people