The Minister of Health denies a health collapse in Ceuta and the president of the city asks her to listen to healthcare professionals

Since the massive entry into Ceuta, thousands of migrants have been living in precarious conditions in industrial estates and natural areas of the city. Some have wounds and illnesses, and healthcare workers and NGO members attend to them on the streets. However, according to the Minister of Health, Mónica García, it is not true that the city's health services are collapsed, as denounced by local authorities and healthcare workers themselves. García, who visited Ceuta this Sunday for the first time since the start of the migratory and humanitarian crisis, limited herself to saying that some services, such as primary care, are "strained".

"There is no health collapse in Ceuta," stated the Minister of Health, emphasizing that no professional has had to cancel holidays and that the local hospital has 50% of its beds available. Ceuta, unlike the peninsular autonomous communities, does not have health competencies, so they are exercised directly from Madrid. García rejected claims that some migrants are carriers of diseases such as tuberculosis, urged the population to remain calm, said there is no reason for fear, and insisted that "migrants do not carry diseases".

García shifted responsibility by stating that the Spanish government has the health resources to meet the demands of immigrants, "but we need spaces to attend to them," implying that the regional administration, controlled by the PP, should be responsible for providing spaces to accommodate migrants with health problems. According to the minister, the main health risk stems from migrants living "crowded together." Therefore, she has asked the city to cede spaces to assess the health of the thousand people who have nowhere to sleep.

Fear of being detained

Regional officials do not share the minister's version, as they assure that the reason why health centers are not even more strained is because the majority of sick migrants or those needing care do not dare to go to hospitals or primary care centers for fear of being detained and deported to Morocco. For this reason, they prefer to be attended by volunteers in the street, the mountains or the beach, where improvised camps have begun to be set up.

The president of Ceuta, the popular Juan Jesús Vivas, who met with the minister, asked her to attend to the professionals' demands and insisted that normality in the autonomous city has been "radically altered." Vivas told García that healthcare is one of the "pillars of the State" and asked her to take into account when making decisions that the situation is "extremely critical, with a population living with bated breath." "Ceuta is in danger," he said.