Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert for the Record a recent article in the Washington Post by Douglas Farah that tells of the tragedies residents of the drug infested Medellin, Colombia, community must suffer on a regular basis. I would like my colleagues to be ever mindful of the fact that drug problems are not endemic to the United States, and while we are being bombarded constantly by the rash of crimes in our communities, we must not ever lose sight of the fact that drug related terrorism is a worldwide problem. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in blood-stained uniforms met the taxis that pulled in, with horns blaring, to the small lot in front of the emergency entrance of the hospital to unload the wounded and dying. It was a Saturday night at the San Vicente de Paul hospital, known in Medellin as La Policlinica, where on weekends the emergency room averages about 150 gunshot victims a night. Because the hospital has no money to pay for orderlies, troops of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts volunteer to work 12-hour shifts to unload the wounded.
Ambulances are scarce, so most patients have to pay for a taxi.
The bleak concrete building has no waiting room, so relatives, barred by an iron gate, wait outdoors. While drug-related terrorism has declined sharply in Medellin since leaders of the city's infamous cocaine cartel surrendered to the government earlier this year, human rights and medical workers say the violence has not declined. And La Policlinica, with few resources, is fighting for survival in one of the most violent cities in the world. In the United States, the national figure is 12 homicides per 100,000 people, and Washington, with 483 homicides last year, has about 80 per 100,000. Most of those who arrive at the hospital here are men between 15 and 30 years old from comunas, the poor neighborhoods that ring the city.