The Health Minister of the Socialist-led government of Spain has claimed that it would be “xenophobic” to say that the thousands of illegal migrants who invaded the exclave city of Ceuta brought diseases with them, while acknowledging confirmed cases of Tuberculosis.
Local health officials from the Spanish-owned North African territory have been increasingly warning of a potential collapse of the city’s health system due to the immense strain placed upon it in the wake of nearly 80,000 illegals storming across the border from Morocco at the end of July, following which thousands remained living in the city, including in makeshift huts made of reeds and garbage on Ceuta’s Trampolín beach.
Earlier this week, an emergency doctor from the University Hospital of Ceuta, Guadalupe Sánchez, said that the city was facing a “sanitary catastrophe” and that the beach was “contaminated” by migrants bathing, urinating, and defecating.
Francisco García Lanzas, of the College of Physicians of Ceuta, said on Thursday that there were around 3,000 predominantly sub-Saharan Africans living in the huts on the beach and that he and his colleagues were treating up to 400 patients on the beach per day.
Despite this, Spanish Health Minister Mónica García insisted on Sunday that Ceuta’s health system is not facing collapse, and that it was “xenophobic” to suggest that the migrants had brought disease with them, the local El Pueblo de Ceuta reported. At the same time, the far-left Más Madrid politician admitted that 5,800 migrants had received medical care over the past 15 days in the city.
“Migrants do not bring diseases,” she insisted, “To associate immigration with disease, I’m sorry, but it’s unfair and xenophobic.”
“The fact that they have illnesses doesn’t mean we should equate migration with disease and say that they are coming to overwhelm our healthcare system. I believe these are two different messages, and in any public health crisis, whether it’s the coronavirus or the DANA storm, misinformation and alarmist reporting are contrary to the most basic public health criteria,” the Health Minister added.
While she claimed that the migrants may become ill due to the current “unsanitary conditions,” García later admitted that there have been at least two confirmed cases of tuberculosis among the illegals who invaded the city on July 3oth. A further 18 unaccompanied minor migrants are also suspected of having tuberculosis after testing positive for the disease.
Multiple sources have claimed that scabies is widespread among the remaining migrants, and the president of the Ceuta Medical Association, Enrique Roviralta, warned that outbreaks of cholera, measles, and infectious diarrhoea could break out among the remaining illegals.
Health Minister García claimed that the risk of an infectious disease hitting the local population was “low”, but acknowledged that there is a “medium” risk of something spreading within the migrant population. She said that, because Ceuta’s hospitals were larger than needed for typical demand, authorities were able to set up “two separate circuits”, dividing the hospital between migrant patients and local patients to prevent the spread of diseases from migrants to Ceuta residents.
“It’s not that we’re going to treat migrants differently from locals, but rather that, considering they may have different health conditions, there are separate pathways,” she claimed.
“Rest assured. All Ceuta residents who wish to and need to use the healthcare system can do so. There is no healthcare collapse. Emergency services, health centres, the SUAP (Primary Care Emergency Service), and all care pathways are fully operational,” the minister maintained.