Case Study: Urgent Medical Care for Asylum-Seeking Infant at US-Mexico Border

Abstract

A 22-month-old male presented at a triage facility within an immigration shelter with wounds, inflammation, and swelling across legs and arms; bloody and pus-filled discharge; skin discoloration, scaling, and swelling; and significant pain. His family had been released from immigration detention after migrating from Central America to the U.S. southern border. The attending triage nurse-midwife immediately transferred the patient to a local hospital for emergency care, in addition to signing the patient’s family into Specialty Care Action Network (SCAN), a pediatric component of Health Network, a virtual system for medical care coordination. After transfer to another hospital for higher level care, where he received a diagnosis of Carvajal syndrome, the patient was sufficiently stable for transport to a hospital in California, his family’s final destination. The resident physician in San Antonio, a SCAN case manager, a network of clinicians, and the medical director in California arranged for his extensive and diverse subspecialty care, through nonprofit funding and charity care in the absence of case management or care for migrants provided by federal immigration and/or health systems.