The border crossing that separates Tijuana in Mexico from San Diego in the United States is one of the busiest routes in the world for drug trafficking and migration. It is a dynamic human corridor shaped by deportations, inequality, prostitution and marginalization that the authorities decided to close in 2020 to contain infections from one side to the other when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out.
But the closure did not stop drug tourism between the two countries. And instead of preventing the spread of disease, the authorities’ strategy led to an increase in HIV transmission, according to a study recently published in the journal The Lancet. The research was a collaborative project between American scientists from the University of California in San Diego and Irvine that analyzed the spread of the virus through interviews with drug users and genetic data of the pathogen.
According to the investigation, closing the border increased the spread of HIV infection, aggravating cross-border transmission. “Injection drug use is one of the main determinants of acquiring it, and mobility across geographic borders can increase the risk of exposure,” said one of the authors of the work, epidemiologist Britt Skaathun.
According to data his team collected, HIV prevalence among that population reached a rate of 16% in Tijuana, compared to 4% in San Diego. This shows how the geographical and social situation on the northern border of Mexico promotes vulnerability to exposure to infection in the population.
To investigate the relationship between border closures, drug use and HIV transmission, scientists tracked more than 600 citizens, 74% of them men, living in Tijuana and San Diego and who, during the closure of the border crossing, went from one side to the others to buy and consume narcotics.
As explained in a study that she coordinated to monitor the rate of infectious diseases among those who inject drugs in northern Mexico, new cases of HIV have increased in recent years. “If in 2019 the rate in Tijuana was 4.5%, now it is up to 12%,” says the researcher, for whom the government cuts have caused a reduction in the supplies to stop the spread of infections, leading to an increase in risky practices such as sharing needles, and increasing the number of infections.
Given the increased risk of HIV, a new arsenal of medicines is recommended
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