Not only food is lacking – many Venezuelans are also making the arduous journey to Colombia because of medicines. Illegal street pharmacies do big business there.
The market starts just behind the border bridge. A young woman holds up blister with paracetamol tablets, 500 milligrams, even these common tablets are no longer available in Venezuela. Even before the first food stalls arrive, drug salespeople surround the thousands of people who come every day from Venezuela to the Colombian border town of Cucuta.
Street pharmacists like Ubaldo offer all sorts of tablets. But also drops, injection solutions. „The Venezuelans buy this medication, because in Venezuela it is very difficult to get them, often they do not exist anymore, and if they exist, then at completely inflated prices,“ he says.
Without packaging and without leaflet
The pills from the street pharmacy are relatively cheap. But nobody knows exactly what he is buying here on the informal market of Cúcuta. Mostly the tablets are offered without packaging and of course without leaflets. In the best case, the drugs have expired, in the worst case fake, bruised, stretched.
Nevertheless, the dubious drugs sell well – because they are cheap, cheaper than in normal pharmacies and of course much cheaper than in Venezuela. 60 cents cost 30 paracetamol tablets, one sixth of the usual pharmacy price in Colombia.
Also vaccines are missing
Former Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria speaks of a veritable mafia selling off counterfeit medicines. But the lack in Venezuela is too big, says Maria, who has just come over the bridge: „There are not even vaccines for newborns that a child needs, the mothers have to come here for it.“
And that’s why people who are in urgent need of medication make the arduous and dangerous way to Colombia. Like Giovanni Plaza: „I am HIV-positive, in Venezuela I almost died, because there was neither enough food nor the medicines for the virus.“
He relies on the relief supplies that are currently arriving at the border. But here in Cucuta three freighters have landed. On board: real medicines, toiletries and food. „I wholeheartedly wish that they do something, that they rebuild the country, that they send the humanitarian aid we really need,“ says Giovanni.
Guaidó wants to end the blockade
But the Tienditas Bridge, a few kilometers south of Cucuta, across which trucks could drive is still blocked. Only pedestrians can cross the border via two smaller bridges. Head of state Nicolás Maduro calls the aid shipments a show that should help overthrow him. Transitional president Juan Guaidó gave the government until Saturday time to let the relief supplies into the country. Otherwise, he wants to try to break the blockade and have the relief supplies distributed by volunteers throughout the country.
