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The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have signed an agreement this Friday to expand assistance operations in the field of health of Latin American migrants in the framework of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the data managed by both organizations, which will work together with the Latin American and Caribbean countries in this regard, on the American continent there are more than 70 million migrants who face “great” challenges of lack of access to basic services, like water, sanitation and health. This lack places them in an “especially vulnerable” situation in the current health emergency.
The Director General of the IOM, António Vitorino, has highlighted a “trend towards social exclusion” of vulnerable migratory groups, so that their needs are “neglected”, something “particularly serious” among women, children, pregnant women and teenagers.
The Director General of PAHO, Carissa Etienne, has also expressed herself in this line, who has insisted that the coronavirus pandemic has “exacerbated many of the deficiencies” that people face.
Venezuelans to Chile
“Migrants have little access to water and sanitation and this does not allow them to follow the basic principles to protect themselves from the disease,” he stressed. In addition, many have no other option than overcrowding, both in the houses and in the places where they spend part of their time, he lamented.
With regard to the labor situation of migrants, they have indicated that it is “very precarious” or they are unemployed because most work in the informal economy and with confinement and border closures they have lost their means of subsistence and, on occasions, their homes, which makes them even more vulnerable.
Vitorino and Etienne have alluded to the migration of large groups that since 2018 have been going from Central America to Mexico or the United States and have focused on more than five million Venezuelans who as of 2015 have left their country for Colombia, Chile and Peru, mainly.
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