Migrant Train Arrivals Risk Lives

Hundreds of migrants arrive aboard a cargo train in Ciudad Juarez, on Mexico's border with the United States, risking serious injury or death from accidents such as falling off the roof.

Aid group Doctors Without Borders warned that migrants were suffering severe physical and mental problems on their way to the United States, calling for a more humane response to the crisis.

The organization, known by its French initials MSF, sounded the alarm about what it called "the devastating medical and humanitarian consequences" of migration policies in Central America and Mexico.

It decried the "political use" of the migration situation "to win votes in societies increasingly hostile to foreigners," in what is an election year in both Mexico and the United States.

MSF said it had provided care to more than 67,000 migrants in Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico last year -- an increase of 21 percent compared with 2022.

Migrants with chronic diseases such as diabetes or HIV suffer serious complications on the road due to a lack of medicines and limited access to treatment, according to the report.

Some 10 percent of the medical consultations carried out by MSF staff in 2023 were due to diseases requiring continuous treatment, such as hypertension, diabetes, asthma, epilepsy or tuberculosis, it said.

People with diabetes who required insulin sometimes stopped treatment and arrived "in critical condition."

Migrants also suffer respiratory, stomach, skin and musculoskeletal ailments on their way to the US-Mexican border.

MSF said it had dealt with 3,817 cases of mental health problems in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico in 2023.

Of those, 48 percent had acute stress, 12 percent had depression, 11 percent suffered from anxiety and eight percent had post-traumatic stress disorder.