Scabies in Ceuta: a health crisis Spain's government refuses to see

Scabies in Ceuta: the health collapse Spain's government refuses to see

How do you control a scabies outbreak when thousands of people are sleeping on the street? The question has hung over Ceuta for days, where the migration crisis has become a first-order public health problem. With the initial emergency over, the outlook is far from encouraging: a doctor in the city tearfully pleaded for help, describing impetigo, scabies and other contact diseases as "a health catastrophe". The Official College of Physicians of Ceuta continues to denounce the collapse, and headlines keep piling up about thousands of people wandering the streets as the crisis passes the two-week mark.

The contagion nobody sees coming

Scabies has a transmission route that is often oversimplified. Contaminated clothing is not the main channel: the dominant mode is close, repeated skin contact with an infected person. In an overcrowded setting with no basic infrastructure, conditions are perfect for the mite to multiply. Those analysing the situation with some foresight point out that scabies had already been reappearing for years in institutions across Spain, and that the lack of an early response is what turns a local outbreak into a structural problem.

Politics and its own agenda

While doctors call for resources, the institutional response moves on a different timetable. The Health Minister, responsible for healthcare powers in Ceuta and Melilla, has announced she will visit the city "in the coming weeks". A schedule that clashes with the urgency on the ground. The controversy over the hospital's emergency wristbands has also drawn attention: some claim they act as a pull factor, being interpreted as a route to apply for asylum. True or not, the debate shifts focus away from the underlying problem: the lack of resources and of a health strategy for a population that continues to go unattended.

Perhaps the plan is to wait for summer to ease skin transmission. Or perhaps, as some have suggested, the next outbreak with a more contagious and lethal disease will make us see Elbichito for what it was: a dress rehearsal. Meanwhile, in Ceuta the scabies keeps spreading, and the official response still has no date.