Pandemic puts focus on providing medical care for migrants

MATAMOROS, Mexico — A humanitarian organization led by U.S. military veterans has treated thousands of migrants over the past year at two clinics in a Mexican town across the border from Texas.

The group, Global Response Management, is attempting to go beyond mere crisis response and build a system to make it easier to track the health of migrants along their journey from Central America.

The efforts are part of a growing trend in humanitarian aid that has accelerated amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has highlighted the difficulties in getting basic health care to migrants. With public hospitals overwhelmed by virus cases, migrants with heart conditions or problematic pregnancies have nowhere to go. Others have been prescribed ineffective medications because a changing array of doctors are forced to treat them without any medical history.

Global Response Management is staffed by volunteers primarily from the U.S. and paid asylum seekers who were medical professionals in their homelands. The group has treated thousands of migrants over the past year at two clinics in Matamoros, including one inside the camp.

Medics with the group have innovated to bring care to the austere environment, building on what they learned from the organization’s work with displaced people in countries such as Bangladesh and Iraq.

They have used telemedicine to consult specialists in the United States and connected a portable device to an iPhone to perform a sonogram. They have also worked with local leaders in the camp to control the spread of the coronavirus by encouraging mask wearing, increasing the number of hand-washing stations and setting up an isolation area. Only one person from the camp has been hospitalized with the virus, even as medical facilities in the area struggled to keep up with infected patients this summer.

But the group’s goal is not just to care for migrants once they reach the border. It wants to offer health care along the routes migrants take.

It’s uncertain how long the camp will even exist since U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to undo the Trump administration policy known as Remain in Mexico, which has forced tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait across the border while their cases are considered by U.S. courts.

The group is working to connect migrants to health care and other resources by asking them what they need via WhatsApp. The idea is to make contact as early as possible with migrants, treat their health problems before they worsen, and create a system where their records can be accessed by doctors along the way.