SAN DIEGO — The line for the free clinic that serves migrant families in Tijuana, Mexico, starts before sunrise.
After the clinic opens, its staff, a mix of employees and volunteers, take patients one by one to tables in an outdoor hallway — a mitigating measure in the ongoing pandemic. Patients needing more in-depth exams are taken to one of the clinic’s two private rooms. Pregnant women meet with midwives in another area.
With Mexico’s already struggling medical system further hamstrung by COVID-19, asylum-seekers who are waiting indefinitely for the United States to begin processing them have turned to Refugee Health Alliance for help with conditions both chronic and acute. But the clinic isn’t equipped to handle the more complex cases it receives or the follow-up care they need.
