Translated, what she said was the universal language of a trauma nurse:“ It was painful to see people arrive without signs of life, including children and older adults,” Palacios said.
The disaster placed additional pressure on a health system already struggling with limited resources.“ Our hospital infrastructure is not adequate to solve this emergency,” she said.
Mallury Alvarez Flores agreed.“ We carried this complex situation for many years,” said the executive delegate and administrator of the Colombian Red Cross in Chocó.“ When the earthquake happened, our struggles intensified further.”
What Alvarez describes is a reality that places Chocó as one of Colombia’ s poorest regions due to generations of extractivism, systemic racism, and historical neglect. Since the late 20th century, the region’ s isolated jungles and abundant natural resources have made it a focal point for armed groups, drug-traffickers, and community displacement.
In Chocó, geography can itself be a barrier to medical care, with communities separated by difficult routes through dense, green forests that often don’ t appear on maps. Reaching the San Francisco de Asís hospital by land from San José del Palmar, near the earthquake’ s epicenter,
can take a seven-hour, 304-kilometer journey along a circuitous route through neighboring departments.
The region’ s rivers do not provide a direct connection either. After the earthquake, some critically injured patients therefore had to be transported by air to hospitals outside of Chocó.
El Espectador, a major newspaper in Colombia, reported that the hospital, with support from the governor’ s office and the Colombian Air Force, evacuated 17 critical patients on the second day and 18 on the third. A large group of patients were sent to health care facilities in Medellín, which is about 220 kilometers from Chocó, by road.
For Palacios, who has been working as a nurse for six years, the effects of the neglect of Chocó’ s infrastructure are not new. The earthquake exposed just how difficult those deficiencies can make an already urgent medical crisis. Beatriz Conto, an Afro-Colombian activist and Vice President of DChocó, a Washington, D. C.-based organization serving the Chocó and Colombian diaspora in the U. S. capital area, couldn’ t locate her family members via phone from her home in Maryland.
“ El Chocó has been abandoned by the government. We haven’ t received support building better infrastructure, streets, internet,” said Conto.“ Its geographic location
Credit: World Central Kitchen / WCK. org
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