This event took place in the auditorium of the Santa Marta Health Secretariat, with the USAID Healthy Communities program and migrant communities.
With the purpose of ensuring that the migrant population, with nearly 75,000 citizens, is no longer considered vulnerable and has equal access to health services, the Santa Marta City Hall, hand in hand with the Ministry of Health and the Healthy Communities Program of USAID, carried out the first dialogue with Community-Based Organizations that represent the Venezuelan migrant population, returned Colombians and the host communities present in the territory.
The event was led by the Secretary of District Health, Jorge Bernal Conde, with the participation of the Secretary of Social Promotion, Luis Pinzón; the representative of the Fundación Equipaje de Talentos, Anny Arteaga and the representative of the Red Musa Foundation, Marielena Zambrano; who agreed that the fundamental fact is to ensure that the migrant population recognizes itself as a subject of rights and strengthens its organizational and associative forms, to consolidate access to the offer of all the services provided by the administration of Mayor Virna Johnson, who in 2021 provided 14,700 health care services and 16,500 in 2022.
The space for dialogue was called Café y Tequeño, a symbol of two protagonists of South American gastronomy, the coffee from Colombia and tequeño from Venezuelato represent the integration that is being promoted from the health sector and the district administration.
“We committed to placing Doctor in your House teams in the neighborhoods with the highest concentration of migrant population and to continue in permanent contact with migrant pregnant women, who during the year 2023 have had 434 newborns and 365 continue their pregnancy with prenatal check-ups, without access barriers to health services, in coordination with ESE Alejandro Prospero Reverendthe Julio Méndez Barreneche University Hospital and international cooperation entities, such as the USAID Healthy Communities program, with whom we are building this space for dialogue and solution based on non-discrimination, fraternity and solidarity towards migrant communities,” he noted. Bernal Count.
According to official information from the Integrated Social Protection Information System, SISPRO, for the year 2022an estimated number of 57,500 migrant citizens out of a total of 1.3 million in the country, being Santa Marta the seventh city that has housed this population the most.
The Secretariat of Social Promotion, for the year 2023, has estimated a population of 71,000 migrants, mainly children under 5 years of age and people between 15 and 43 years old, 70% women, located especially in the neighborhoods Chimila, Gaira and Mirafloresbut in general, distributed in the 3 localities and in the rural area.