Venezuelans make taxing trek to seek health care in Colombia

Six months after Venezuela’s socialist government shut its border with Colombia to fight smuggling, thousands of patients continue to make an arduous trek to get treatment in Colombian hospitals.

The closure has reshaped daily life for everyone along the frontier, but for sick Venezuelans hoping to escape their country’s collapsed medical system, the consequences have been painful and sometimes deadly.

Dany Cubides, a 33-year-old dialysis patient, collapsed early this year on the bridge connecting this town of brightly painted shacks with the Colombian city of Cucuta as he made his way back home after treatment.

Perhaps the only thing worse than slogging to a clinic in Colombia is slogging through the Venezuelan health care system, which is beset by the economic chaos ravaging the country as a whole.

Public hospitals in the country no longer have consistent running water and electricity, and medical supplies are scarce.

Private clinics run their dialysis machines in three shifts to accommodate as many people as possible, and still have no room for new patients.

Noe Leal, a 66-year-old taxi driver in Urena whose kidneys are failing, shuns San Cristobal’s chaotic hospitals, preferring instead to grapple with officialdom as he crosses the border three times a week for treatment in Cucuta.

“They’re playing with people’s lives, making grandfathers, people who can barely walk, come and wait like this all day,” center director Luis Hernando said, drawing cheers.