Lack of interest and information regarding the vaccination process against covid-19, limited follow-up to prevention measures and language are the main obstacles faced by Haitian migrants stranded in the city of Tapachula, Chiapas, southern border of Mexico .
Given this, the Mexican authorities are working on a proposal through the regional Health Committee to evaluate “if they can bring a vaccination module” to the offices of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid (COMAR) and the High Commissioner for Refugees ( UNHCR), in addition to the Miguel Hidalgo central park, places with the highest concentration of foreigners.
“There are medical issues such as knowing if the vaccine can be taken from one place to another, so the proposal is being evaluated and we only have to wait for the issue of the authorities,” Ángel Milton Ordóñez, general visitor specialized in Attention to Migrants of the State Commission of Human Rights.
The representative assured that Haitian migrants “are unaware of the vaccination that the Mexican government is carrying out because of the language.”
In Haiti, the two official languages of are Haitian Creole and French.
He said that so far “it is unknown if any migrant has been infected with coronavirus” and said that the Ministry of Health is the one that should have the data.
“With us we swim, relatives have come to ask us for support to carry out the burial of some migrant person, but we do not know if they died of coronavirus or another type of disease,” he said.
According to Ordoñez, a good part of the Haitian migrants “are willing to be vaccinated, but health promotion activities are needed because they do not know where to do it.”
For this reason, the Tapachula authorities, through mobile speakers and the delivery of brochures in Spanish, English and French, inform migrants about prevention measures.
He also recognized that the arrival of migrants who arrive in Tapachula in search of some immigration procedure to be in the country legally in recent weeks has doubled.
In fact, he said that Haitian migrants are the second group with the largest irregular presence and recalled that Comar has received almost 52,000 refugee applications since January to date.
Of that number, 9,327 are Haitians who have requested refugee status in the country to obtain documents and continue advancing to the northern border with the aim of reaching the United States.
Meanwhile, Luis Rey García Villagrán, director of the Center for Human Dignification (CDH), pointed out that the migrant population is “exposed to the covid-19 pandemic, so by being stranded in Tapachula, they run the risk of having a high rate of infections “.
According to data from the CDH, more than 4,000 migrants have arrived in Tapachula in the last two weeks and the arrival of the Caribbean people has risen more than 300% compared to other years.
On Wednesday, the Government of Mexico reported that since February to date it has vaccinated some 25,000 foreigners, including migrants and visitors from other countries who have been among the age groups that have been immunized in the country.
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