Thursday, March 8, 2018

SICK VENEZUELANS FLEE TO COLUMBIA

   As Venezuela's economic crisis worsens, rising numbers are fleeing in a burgeoning refugee crisis that is drawing alarm across Latin America. Independent groups estimate that as many as 3 million to 4 million Venezuelans have abandoned their homeland in recent years, with several hundred thousand departing in 2017 alone.
   Many of those migrants are arriving by foot in Colombia and landing in the Andean nation's emergency rooms with urgent medical conditions that Venezuelan hospitals can no longer treat.
    According to health officials, Venezuelans made nearly 25,000 visits to Colombian ERs last year, up from just 1,500 in 2015. At hospitals in border cities like Cucuta, patients are packed side by side on stretchers that spill into hallways, not much unlike the deplorable conditions they fled back home. Authorities project that Venezuelan admissions to Colombian hospitals could double in 2018 and say the nation's already overstretched public health system is unprepared to handle the sudden swell.

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