The lifeless body of Germán Alonso Sepúlveda Manrique, 31 years old, who was deprived of his liberty, was taken to the morgue of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Bucaramanga.
This man died of natural causes, but investigations were requested to confirm if his death was due to tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis is a disease iinfectious disease caused by a type of bacteria that usually affects the lungs. It spreads through the air when an infected person coughs, sneezes or spits.
Hernando Mantilla Medina, defender of Prison Rights in Santander, announced that Germán Alonso’s health condition worsened while he was detained at the Centro station of the Bucaramanga Metropolitan Police.
“According to information the mother gave me, everything seems to indicate that she died of tuberculosis. It is not known exactly why she claims that, every time he had been admitted to the hospital, she was not allowed in, and she did not know exactly the situation of her son,” the defender announced.
Sepúlveda Manrique himself would have asked for help in recent days due to the deterioration of his health, without this response being given in a timely manner.
“The mother expresses that her health has worsened in recent days. He asked that he be taken to the hospital, obviously as is always the case, his request was not attended to in time and when they did it was already too late,” denounced Hernando Mantilla Medina.
Investigators from the Police Sijin were in charge of carrying out the technical inspection of the body on the night of this Thursday, June 13, at the Santander University Hospital, HUS. The body remains in Forensic Medicine in the Campo Hermoso neighborhood.
The prison defender regretted the situation and urged the authorities to take measures to reduce overcrowding in police stations.
“It is the product of what I have been saying for more than three years, the damage caused by overcrowding, the death of inmates, and the territorial entities continue to make promises to build temporary detention centers and are seen these very negative results,” concluded Hernando Mantilla.
In Colombia, according to National Institute of Health, with cutoff to epidemiological week 10 of 2024, notifications were made 3,027 cases of tuberculosis residing in the country and of these 2,766 are incident cases (new plus relapse). The district territorial entities with the highest number of cases were: Medellín (418), Bogotá DC (226), Cali (213), Barranquilla (122) and the municipalities of Bucaramanga (100)Cúcuta (95), Rivera (81) and Villavicencio (72).
