The clinic in Mexico that offers medical services to migrants

A clinic in Mexico serves migrants from other parts of the continent heading to the United States. It's a story that breaks paradigms and provides medical care to anyone regardless of their immigration status.

For 15 years, Dr. Sarahí Hernández has directed the Bassaury Medical Unit in Nezahualcóyotl, a municipality in the State of Mexico founded in the 1990s by migrants from the interior of the country. Today, it is a key point for the wave of migrants transiting toward the U.S. She sees this clinic as an alternative for care in the face of health barriers.

Hernández tells EFE that she is the daughter of the first foreigners to populate Nezahualcóyotl or Neza, as its now million inhabitants call it, and that the community affection toward her and her family was born because, for half a century, they have guaranteed access to health care regardless of nationality, skin color or socioeconomic status .

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"In 1975, when my father started giving consultations, there were only four doctors and a lot of poverty, births were at home, transfers were by bicycle, there was nothing," he says in the garden of the medical unit, a house he built and adapted in 2009 after Mexican authorities tried to close the clinics for considering them "papito (low quality) and a danger to society."

At the moment, Hernández's private clinic is one of 100 in Neza, and offers consultations for 200 pesos. , a cost four times lower than private hospitals, as well as specialized care: traumatology, orthopedics, neurology, pediatrics and even general surgery .

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For three years, the specialist has assisted dozens of migrants who arrive in this municipality with the dream of leaving for the United States, although she highlights that the flow has decreased since President Donald Trump took office on January 20 , when, as of May of this year, 113,612 migrants have been registered living in Mexico illegally, and more than half are in the Mexican capital or its surroundings, where Neza is located.

In Mexico, he laments, Migrants face many barriers and cannot access public health services unless they present an ID card. .

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Health institutions, he explains, "don't understand that these are people fleeing or who were assaulted along the way," or that they were kidnapped by organized crime and even pursued by the police, which leaves them with serious injuries such as "fractures or amputations."

"They come to live a dream and return in ashes," he says, referring to the case of a young Venezuelan man who died of cancer and was also kidnapped along with another companion . What he "most wants is to return home to tell his people not to come" to Mexican territory.

Consequences of migration

Hernández explains that The migratory journey of thousands of kilometers has consequences for health. , then to your office People arrive with "malnutrition, parasitic, intestinal, and respiratory infections (due to the change in climate), lower back pain, and severe cases of depression." .

"Furthermore, the public health system doesn't even have the resources to care for its citizens... Hospitals are open, but there aren't enough supplies; people bring their own medicine," he added.

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These consequences were experienced firsthand by her patient, Vanessa Alejo, who tells EFE that since fleeing Venezuela she suffered physical and sexual abuse that made her want to "take her own life," although the idea of ​​arriving with her youngest daughter in the United States motivated her to continue.

Armed with his daughter, Sofía, Alejo crossed the Darien jungle, where he suffered from "infections from drinking river water" and lived in "shelters with poor medical care."

However, she confesses that the danger began in the southern state of Chiapas, where a group of hooded and armed men under 20 kidnapped her, demanding 1,600 pesos for her release.

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"Many people stayed there, those who didn't have money couldn't leave (...) People who didn't pay were disappeared on the third day," he reveals about a country with more than 130,000 missing people.

Upon hearing Alejo's testimony, the office falls silent, but without hesitation, Hernández reiterates her greatest learning as a doctor: "We are not masters of life or death, but we cannot be indifferent to the pain of others."

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OA