The humanitarian situation in the High and Medium Security Prison and Penitentiary Complex of Medellín, known as El Pedregal, has reached a critical point that keeps the Public Ministry authorities on alert.
The Medellín Ombudsman, under the leadership of Mefi Boset Rave Gómez, expressed its deep concern about the systematic failures in the medical care of inmates, warning that the lack of timely treatment and essential medications is compromising the dignity and lives of thousands of people.
According to the control entity’s report, the Penitentiary and Prison Services Unit (USPEC) and the temporary union Medisalud have repeatedly failed to guarantee basic health logistics.
In the establishment, where approximately 1,134 women and 2,710 men live, there has been evidence of a lack of healthcare personnel that prevents adequate treatment for patients with contagious and chronic diseases, older adults and pregnant women.
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This lack has unleashed a wave of discontent that is already translating into protests and demonstrations in women’s wards 15 and 18.
The crisis has forced preventive closures and isolations to be decreed, as is currently happening in men’s ward number 3, given the risk of the spread of pathologies without the necessary medical control.
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For the Ombudsman, these omissions in clinical treatment are not just administrative failures, but a systematic violation of intangible fundamental rights.
The entity recalled that, according to the Constitutional Court in recent rulings such as C-348 of 2024, keeping a person in health conditions incompatible with confinement can be considered cruel and inhuman treatment.
Given this panorama of an “Unconstitutional State of Affairs”, the Public Ministry agency made an urgent call to the USPEC, INPEC and Medisalud to take immediate action.
The Ombudsman reaffirmed that it will continue with permanent surveillance in El Pedregal, ensuring that criminal punishment should not imply the suspension of the fundamental right to receive dignified and specialized treatment.
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