VivirLatino

Yesterday La Macha wrote about President Obama’s Healthcare Summit and how he said what so many of us already know, that the healthcare system needs to be built anew and fast. Pero what do we do in the meantime especially in immigrant neighborhoods where so many of the undocumented are uninsured? I know my neighborhood is full of storefront clinics and if those clinics were to close? That’s exactly what one immigrant community in Chicago is facing.

The University of Illinois at Chicago says it’s closing a medical clinic geared for low-income women in a mostly Mexican neighborhood. But a community group is fighting to keep the facility open. We report from our West Side bureau.

UIC says it runs 10 community clinics in the city. In Pilsen, the Center for Women and Families last year handled some 6,400 patient visits.

The university says the clinic runs an annual deficit of $200,000. A spokesman says Illinois’s budget crunch leaves no choice but to close the facility by June 30.

The decision isn’t going over well with campus unions or a neighborhood group called the Pilsen Alliance.

PAREDES: This clinic is really important for our community.

The alliance’s Rodrigo Paredes spoke to pickets in front of the clinic last night.

PAREDES: All the women come here. All the pregnant women want to come here. So it’s our time to fight. The community of Pilsen is going to fight to the end.

Paredes says a petition drive will begin this weekend.

The university, meanwhile, is referring the patients to another clinic about four miles south

Four miles may seem like nothing if you have a car or access to public transportation and access means more that having a train or bus nearby. It means being able to afford that transportation. So I was wondering if the right to health care includes having good local healthcare?

Via / Chicago Public Radio