Sick Venezuelan migrants, Colombians get surgery aboard U.S. ship

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

WORLD NEWS NOVEMBER 28, 2018 / 4:47 PM / UPDATED 2 HOURS AGO

Sick Venezuelan migrants, Colombians get surgery aboard U.S. ship

Julia Symmes Cobb
5 MIN READ

ABOARD THE USNS COMFORT (Reuters) - Three-year-old Emily is curled in the corner of a bunk bed, under anesthesia. Her Venezuelan mother watches over her, swaying as the hospital ship pitches back and forth off the coast of northern Colombia.

Emily’s parents spent years in Venezuela trying to get a mass removed from her right eyelid, but shortages of food and medicine forced them to migrate across the border to Colombia to seek treatment, as their nation’s healthcare system collapsed.

U.S. Navy surgeons completed the procedure in just 30 minutes, suturing the small wound with miniscule stitches aboard the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship making its penultimate stop on a Latin American tour of four countries including Peru, Ecuador and Honduras.

“The operation was so important because it affected her face,” Emily’s mother, Rubileth Parra, 24, said. “We couldn’t get her an operation (in Venezuela), so we came here.”

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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-migration-colombia/sick-venezuelan-migrants-colombians-get-surgery-aboard-u-s-ship-idUSKCN1NX2SJ

[GatoGordo]

1. Maduro insists there is nothing amiss in Venezuela hospitals.