Deported AIDS Patients
September 8, 2010
Health officials in the northern Mexican border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, routinely attend persons suffering from AIDS and deported from the United States. Armando Covarrubias Trevino, chief of the Ambulatory Center for the Prevention of AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, told the Mexican press that six deported AIDS victims were seen by Mexican health and immigration officials in Reynosa during the month of August alone.
According to Covarrubias, Mexican authorities are informed ahead of time of the expected arrival of AIDS victims.
“We have good coordination with the Texas Department of Health and are notified of this type of situation when a migrant is infected with the disease,” Covarrubias said. Deported AIDS patients who are Mexican nationals, he said, are given exams and a basic dose of special medication to help ward off sickness.
Reynosa health workers also give Central and South American AIDS victims medical exams, but are limited in supplying anti-AIDS drugs because of residency issues and the fact that the migrants are in transit, Covarrubias added.
On the other side of the border, in the Baja California border city of Tijuana, AIDS victims are also among deportees from the United States.
Gudelia Rangel Gomez, researcher for Tijuana’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte, reported that preliminary research last year detected at least 10 individuals among deportees who were suffering AIDS.
Rangel said the deportees with AIDS included people who had resided for many years in the United States or had been incarcerated in prisons north of the border. Unlike 2009, a similar study of migrants in 2002 did not detect any AIDS cases, Rangel added.
Sources: La Jornada/Notimex, September 5, 2010. Lacronica.com, July 25, 2010.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S. -Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico
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