Officials race to deliver health care to migrant caravan

SAN DIEGO — Two months pregnant, Jessica Mejia of Honduras received flu and tetanus vaccinations and prenatal vitamins in the health clinic at Tijuana’s El Barretal shelter Friday.

She was one of many in the 6,000-strong migrant caravan to receive checkups, medications and even minor surgery from a growing set of medical services that added a mobile hospital last week.

It’s a far cry, said Jose Mateo, 30, of Guatemala, from the single medicine dispensary initially available to migrants who began arriving at Benito Juarez Sports Complex in mid-November.

“Everything here is more organized,” Mateo said. “It changes everything in the sense that we have better treatment.”

As the caravan of asylum seekers approached the border, many in Mexico and the United States worried that such a large group would increase the odds of a public health crisis.

But Dr. Wilma Wooten, San Diego County’s public health officer, said the health services now being provided in migrant shelters on both sides of the border provide an important point of contact to spot early symptoms of disease and separate those who are infected from those who aren’t.

Accessible health care inside shelters is an important part of keeping disease outbreaks from moving into the general population that crosses the border by the thousands every day.

According to Baja California’s health ministry, workers have provided more than 5,000 medical consultations to migrants in Tijuana and Mexicali as of last Monday.

A registry is tracking the health status of 45 pregnant women living in the shelters. Though the Mexican government has said that rumors of a tuberculosis outbreak in the shelters are not accurate, nearly 3,200 are dealing with respiratory ailments, mostly colds and coughs. Four have tested positive for HIV, two for syphilis.

The largest health threat so far has been a chickenpox outbreak which had infected seven people. At the request of volunteers, Dr. Adam Breslow, president of the Children’s Physicians Medical Group in San Diego, sent 70 doses of chickenpox vaccine south to inoculate children at risk of becoming infected.