CÚCUTA, Colombia—Once a month, Marisol Ramírez travels 43 miles by car and then on foot to cross one of the most dangerous borders in the world. She joins the estimated 30,000 people daily who travel across the Simón Bolívar International Bridge to enter Colombia from Venezuela. As the economic and political crisis in Venezuela has intensified over the past few years, this bridge has become one of the main ways to access affordable food and goods for thousands of Venezuelans.

Like many with chronic health conditions, Ramírez knows her health depends on reaching Colombia.

“If during the bridge crossing, they don’t even give us the chance of at least getting to the hospital, we are going to go die,” she said in an interview over the summer.

Ramírez, 56, has lived the past 20 years of her life with HIV/AIDS. Until recently, she had been able to get treatment to keep the virus in check in her home in Cordero, Venezuela, where she would receive antiretroviral therapy that helps control the number of copies of the virus in her body. She was doing fine with her medication until the health care system of Venezuela stopped purchasing the medicine she needs.

“Almost eight months ago I changed [where I receive antiretroviral] therapy, because since 2017 in Venezuela, they stopped buying [antiretroviral] drugs,” Ramírez said. “What little has arrived are from donations, because the government hasn’t [been] buying the treatment.”

Venezuela’s health care system is collapsing—another victim of the nation’s economic and political turmoil. In 1998, Hugo Chávez was elected president promising that he would provide free health care to all Venezuelans. But the oil-rich country’s economy has struggled since global oil prices began to fall in 2008. Since current President Nicolás Maduro, a protege of the late Chávez, came to power in 2013, the situation has gone from bad to worse. Read more via Foreign Policy