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Colombia Kindly Offers Free Health Care To Venezuelans -- Up To A Point
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/08/20/751192495/free-health-care-for-venezuelans-in-colombia-isn-t-always-free----------------
In the last 18 months, close to 1.3 million Venezuelans have arrived in Colombia to stay, according to Migration Colombia. "It's as if we had [a new] city the size of [the port city] Cartagena," Iván Darío González, Colombia's vice-minister of public health, told NPR.
This migration movement has been characterized as the largest in the history of the Western hemisphere, and it's an entirely new phenomenon for the region — and for Colombia in particular, says Ellen Rymshaw, head of the Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontiers) mission in Colombia. "There's the intention to provide care to all of those people who are caught up in this crisis. And that is admirable," she says.
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Indeed, in May 2017, the Colombian government declared that all public hospitals must provide free emergency treatment for Venezuelan patients. That covers care to people with health emergencies, including diseases like malaria and measles. It means pregnant women can deliver at no cost; more than 29,000 have given birth between March 2017 and March 2019. And it also means free vaccinations for children.