VENEZUELA – BEYOND THE PROTESTS, WOMEN’S DAILY DESPAIR – DIRE POVERTY, HUNGER, MEDICAL NEEDS
Author: WUNRN
Date: May 24, 2017
Venezuelans have taken to the streets in their tens of thousands over the past seven weeks in anti-government protests that have left at least 43 demonstrators dead and hundreds injured. They show no signs of abating. But lurking behind the political protests is a deepening humanitarian crisis that gets less press: Malnutrition has risen sharply, maternal mortality jumped by 65 percent last year, infant mortality by 30 percent. The protests are just the tip of a much more alarming iceberg. The truth is that many of the worst-off Venezuelans are too poor and too hungry to protest, even if they wanted to.
Over the past two years, falling oil prices have sent Venezuela’s economy into freefall. The result: chronic shortages of food and medicines, rampant crime, and an inflation rate estimated to be 720 percent and rising.
The anger on the streets is prompted in part by the denial of President Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government that there is a crisis (the health minister was sackedshortly after her department released the infant and maternal mortality figures) and its refusal to allow in international aid.
While the protest movement has been led by the predominantly middle-class opposition, those suffering the most from the food shortages and lack of functioning health services are the poorest households that once backed former President Hugo Chavez. While many no longer support the government, they feel little affinity with the opposition and are often too preoccupied by the daily search for food to join the protests. Their individual stories reveal as much about Venezuela’s crisis as the near daily scenes of protesters clashing with riot police.
Forced to choose: diapers or medicines
Barbara Mendez marks the end of each day in her mental calendar as another day that ‘Nely’, her eight-month-old daughter, has survived. Nelysmar was born with a heart condition resulting from a blood vessel that failed to close after birth. Blood now moves erratically between her heart and lungs.
“It is a miracle that she is still alive,” says Bárbara, who is only 16 but has the care-worn face of someone much older.
There is no treatment for Nelysmar’s condition. The only solution is a surgical procedure for which she has been on a waiting list since the day she was born. At the Children’s Cardiology Hospital in Caracas – the only hospital in the country that performs such procedures – less than half the operating rooms are functioning, due to a lack of maintenance. Nationally, less than 10 percent of operating rooms are fully operational and 40,000 people are now on waiting lists for surgery, according to the Venezuelan Health Observatory (OVS).
Nely’s condition often leads to infections that require antibiotics, a major expenditure for Bárbara, who dropped out of high school to care for her daughter and now relies on her boyfriend’s parents for support.
Eight-month-old Nelysmar was born with a heart condition that requires surgery, but less than 10 percent of operating rooms in Venezuela are fully functioning
According to the Venezuelan Federation of Pharmacies, around 85 percent of medicines are unavailable here. People are forced to travel to neighbouring countries to find the medicines they need. Those that can be found within the country are often sold on the black market at prices unaffordable for people like Bárbara.
At a certain point, she had to choose between buying diapers or medicines. She chose medicines and substitutes rags for diapers. As a result, Nely suffers from painful rashes.
Bárbara and Nely have spent countless sleepless nights at the hospital because of Nely’s respiratory problems. Bárbara listens terrified as Nely gasps for breath.
“I’m well aware that she can die at any moment,” she says. “I’m praying every day for that call from the hospital.”
Teachers and pupils go hungry
Vanessa Posada, 36, grew up in what she describes as an average, middle-class family in Caracas. She went to university and then found a job as a school-teacher, before getting married and having a child. “Everything was on the right track. I was happy,” she says.
Then Venezuela’s economic crisis hit her family. Starting in 2014, the cost of food began to rise much more rapidly than the wages earnt by Vanessa and her husband, Adolfo. They sold their car and were forced to move into the house they had been building but couldn’t afford to finish.
Last year, Vanessa had an accident that damaged her right knee and kept her at home for four months. She was fired from her morning teaching job and left with only a few hours of teaching at another school in the afternoon. Her and Adolfo’s salaries combined had been just enough to buy food. Now, there wasn’t enough money even for that. First, the family eliminated meat from their diet; then they subsisted on rice and beans. Now, many evenings, the couple eat only one plantain or skip a meal to ensure their six-year-old son, Armando, can eat.
Vanessa has lost more than 10 kilos in less than a year and only weighs 46 kilos. According to an annual survey of living conditions in Venezuela conducted by three universities (ENCOVI), three out of every four Venezuelans lost an average of 8.7 kilos last year. The same study found that 93 percent of Venezuelans have insufficient money to buy food.
At the school where Vanessa works in the afternoon, the situation is no better than at home. Students are increasingly skipping school because they are too weak from lack of food. An estimated one million Venezuelan children are now out of school and classes are regularly cancelled due to teachers being absent.
A few weeks ago, one of Vanessa’s students stole her classmate’s lunch because she was hungry. Now, Vanessa shares her lunch with the girl.
“They’re like my children; I can’t let them starve, no matter how hungry I might be.”
Extrajudicial killings
His name was Keleller Gallegos Reverte and he died one morning last May when a group of 12 soldiers burst into his house and shot him as he woke up next to his wife. He was 19.
The raid on Keleller’s house was part of an anti-crime offensive called OLP (Operation Liberation and Protection of the People), which launched in 2015 with the goal of reclaiming neighbourhoods controlled by criminal gangs. Critics of the initiative say it has spread more violence and fear in the country and has been responsible for grave human rights violations.
Keleller was innocent, says his mother, Natalie Gallegos, who suspects the soldiers were looking for her brother, Luis Carlos Reverte, aka El Coqui, a well-known criminal in the area who has been dodging the authorities for more than 10 years. “Nobody picks their family,” says Natalie with a sigh.
Natalie Gallegos holds up a picture of her son, Keleller Gallegos Reverte, shot dead by soldiers carrying out Operation Liberation and Protection of the People
Venezuela’s crime rates have been climbing in recent years, as the financial crisis has deepened. They are now among the highest in the world. The Venezuelan Observatory for Violence estimates there were 28,479 violent deaths in 2016, including 5,281 classified as resulting from “resistance to authority”.
The security forces’ heavy-handed response to crime has been blamed for decimating Venezuela’s poorest neighbourhoods. Local human rights group Proveoclaims the OLP was responsible for the extrajudicial killings of more than 700 people between July 2015 and September 2016. Many of the victims were innocent young men with no criminal records like Keleller. According to Natalie, after killing her son, the soldiers fired bullets all over the room to make it look like the scene of a confrontation.
A year after his death, the complaint she lodged with the Attorney General’s office has gone unanswered. Amnesty International has noted that only three percent of complaints relating to the OLP result in the culprits facing criminal charges.
“In this country, there’s no justice,” says Natalie.
VENEZUELA – PROTESTS SWELL ACROSS VENEZUELA – ECONOMIC CRISIS DEEPENS
“Venezuelans have struggled for years with food and medical shortages, and — more recently — skyrocketing prices on all types of goods, as hyperinflation wipes out salaries and the value of the currency, the bolivar.” BUT, many of the multiple photos of recent riots show men, opposition and pro-government, conflict, injuries. MEDIA coverage needs to show more of the realities of WOMEN and GIRLS of Venezuela, and other regions under tensions. So, WUNRN shows now a history of the struggle of the poor of Venezuela, in photos that highlight women’s dire realities. WUNRN
VENEZUELA – DIRE POVERTY, HUNGER, MEDICAL NEEDS, BUT AID SHUT OUT
CARACAS, 22 November 2016 – It’s barely dawn and the streets of Caracas are largely empty, except for heavy-eyed commuters heading to work and hungry Venezuelans scavenging through the rubbish for breakfast.
The men and women meticulously pick their way through foul-smelling black plastic bags in the hope of finding some edible scraps. Passers-by don’t give them a second glance. This is an increasingly common sight in Venezuela’s capital.
Despite having one of the world’s largest oil reserves, years of government mismanagement along with a tumble in oil prices have led to the catastrophic collapse of Venezuela’s economy, food supply, health system, and basic services, leaving a population desperate for help – more than eight in 10 Venezuelans now live below the poverty line.
Food shortages have forced Venezuelans to drastically cut their daily food consumption, with more than 41 percent of the population now eating just two meals a day, according to findings by local research firm, More Consulting.
Meanwhile, doctors are struggling to treat even simple infections and chronic illnesses due to a severe shortage of medicines and medical supplies. Even water is in short supply following several years of drought.
According to a Datanalisis poll, Venezuela is experiencing shortages of 80 percent of foods and medicines. A spiralling inflation rate means that even those goods that are available are mostly unaffordable to all but the wealthiest.
And yet, the government has continued to deny the existence of what is by now a well-documented humanitarian crisis, blaming it instead on a “financial war” waged by enemies of the state.
NGOs treated like spies
The government’s stance means that international and local NGOs attempting to alleviate the crisis face numerous obstacles.
“It’s been a while now since we began seeing an increase in threats, harassment and even physical attacks on activists and NGOs,” said Inti Rodriguez of local NGO, PROVEA.
PROVEA tackles the complex issue of human rights in Venezuela, including citizen’s rights to medicine and food. Like other non-profits, the government has accused PROVEA of receiving financial backing from foreign organisations, including the CIA, and of being agents in an international conspiracy to oust President Nicolas Maduro.
“This was a constant [problem] during [the administration of former President] Chavez, but it has increased with Maduro,” said Rodriguez, who was abducted in February 2014, allegedly by a coalition of government-affiliated guerrillas and the Venezuelan intelligence services, SEBIN, who beat him and questioned him about his humanitarian work.
NGOs in Venezuela have felt particularly vulnerable since 2010 when the Supreme Court ruled that individuals or organisations receiving foreign funding “with the purpose of being used against the Republic” could be prosecuted for treason and sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
The threat of imprisonment has modified how NGOs communicate both with the public and with each other. Staff often encrypt sensitive information before sharing it with others and rely on networks to keep each other informed if colleagues run into trouble with the authorities.
“I think they’re very brave and they keep doing their jobs, but it’s a very hostile environment for local organisations to operate in,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, which released a report last month about Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis.
The cost of denial
Rodriguez noted that those most affected by the government’s restrictions on NGOs are the very people they seek to help. “[They] feel intimidated when they go to an organisation that has been pinpointed as an enemy [of the government]. Authorities try to intimidate the victims so they won’t come to us.”
In February, Maduro turned down the opposition’s request to enroll the country in a World Health Organization programme to receive subsidised medical supplies. And in May, his administration blocked an effort by the opposition-led National Assembly to pass a law that would have facilitated international aid and authorised the shipment of medicines from abroad.
“We’ve tried to request permission to allow help into the country, but there are specific criteria [in place] to allow the entry of medicine and food products,” said Janeth Marquez, national director for Catholic charity, Caritas.
In August, three tonnes of medications that Caritas had secured from Chilean donors were blocked from entering the country and held in the port town of La Guaira. The organisation has been waiting ever since for the Ministry of Health to issue an elusive document that would allow the aid in. By next month, some of the medicines will expire, rendering them useless.
“Medicine can only come in via the state, and only during emergencies will they allow them [to come in] through other means,” said Marquez. “We are worried because there are people whose lives are at risk.”
Finding a way
Some local NGOs have managed to get around restrictive border controls by shipping small amounts of aid in private packages.
“It’s the only way,” said Ana Isabel Otero, founder of Comparte Por Una Vida, a seven-month-old non-profit that receives donations of baby formula and nutritional supplements from around the world and distributes them to children in hospitals and orphanages.
Such interventions are urgently needed in a country where rates of infant mortality have nearly doubled in recent years, according to internal Ministry of Health reports obtained by Human Rights Watch. Doctors also report that they are seeing increasing numbers of malnourished babies.
And yet, Otero struggled even to register her organisation as an NGO. “The places where you go and register are complicated; there are mafias [operating them],” she said. “I had to register in three different town halls. It took me five months before I was registered.”
Caritas, along with other NGOs and activists, has been calling on the government to open a humanitarian corridor that would allow urgently needed aid into the country.
“This [corridor] needs to be approved… it goes beyond politics and political interests,” said Marquez. “If we can’t do this, if we can’t even agree on the lives of our own people, we’re in big trouble in Venezuela,” she added.
Papal intervention
An agreement to allow international aid into the country is one of the numerous issues the opposition is pushing for during Vatican-mediated talks with the government that started in October.
Few international NGOs have been given permission to operate in the country. Those that are present are required to inform the government of their every move, and none have been authorised to run large-scale medical assistance programmes to address the crisis in the healthcare system.
Médecins Sans Frontières, which partners with local organisations to provide mental healthcare to victims of urban violence in Caracas, responded to questions from IRIN that it has “a low coms approach” in Venezuela. Other international NGOs that IRIN contacted for this article also declined to comment.
“Their biggest concern is that they fear losing the limited authorisation they have to operate,” said Vivanco of Human Rights Watch, which also struggled to get international NGOs to go on the record for its recent report.
UN agencies operating in the country, including the WHO, the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) and UNICEF, have also kept a low profile and did not respond to IRIN’s requests for comment. “They can’t do much without government authorisation. They say their hands are tied because of that,” said Vivanco.
“A big problem is that they haven’t done a public independent assessment of the crisis,” he added. “You have [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon saying there’s a humanitarian crisis, and still, the humanitarian agencies that have the capacity of doing an assessment and engaging with the government to palliate the effects of the crisis in the short term do not appear to have done it.”
In July, 50 Venezuelan NGOs penned an open letter to Ban accusing UN agencies of remaining silent about Venezuela’s crisis and “failing to fulfil its responsibilities”.
Four months on, the need for the Vatican-backed talks to yield a breakthrough grows by the day.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/18/news/economy/venezuela-economy-protests-imf/http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/04/venezuela-happening-170412114045595.html
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VENEZUELA – DIRE FOOD SHORTAGES – DEEP RECESSION – DESPERATE HUMANITARIAN NEEDS BUT AUTHORITIES RESIST – WOMEN
By Patrick Gillespie – August 11, 2016
You name it, Venezuela is short of it: Meat, fish, fruits, sugar and bread. The government just doesn’t have enough money to pay for them.
It has created a staggering humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, where citizens don’t have enough food to eat. Looting and riots have rocked the country. The declines in exports of certain food categories are staggering.
- Bread shipments to Venezuela fell 94% in the first half of 2016 compared to the the same period last year. That’s $216,000 worth of bread this year, versus $3.5 million last year.
- Meat exports declined 63% to $127 million, from nearly $350 million last year. Exports of fruit such as bananas and strawberries plunged 99%, to $159,000, from $21 million. Fish exports dropped 87%. Sugar fell 34%
The numbers come from Panjiva, a global trade analytics firm, which pulls data from the United Nations, U.S. customs and other governments. For this article, Panjiva pulled export data from the United States, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Chile. Venezuela likely gets food from other countries that were excluded from this analysis.
Venezuelans “can’t buy bread and meat and all you can really get is cereals — the really, really basic stuff,” says Chris Rogers, a research analyst at Panjiva.
Venezuela’s economy has plunged into a deep recession and the country is fast running out of cash.
The key problem behind Venezuela’s inability to pay its bills is that the value of its currency, the bolivar, has plummeted dramatically in the last couple of years. That’s made paying for food imports prohibitively expensive.
“The Brazilians aren’t unwilling to sell meat to Venezuela. It’s not a political thing. The Venezuelans just don’t have the money,” says Rogers.
However, exports of a handful of basic foods did go up. U.S. corn exports to Venezuela rose to $239 million from $140 million last year. And vegetable exports rose to $270,000 from $102,000.
Panjiva’s numbers parallel other, broader estimates. Bank of America (BAC) forecasts Venezuela’s total imports dropped between 40% and 45% in the first five months of this year from last year.
Venezuela’s government doesn’t publish reliable import data.
Venezuela is the world’s worst-performing economy this year, according to the IMF. Its economy is projected to shrink 10% this year and inflation could skyrocket over 700%.
The government seems to have prioritized its debt payments over food shortages. Venezuelans wait in lines outside supermarkets often for hours only to find empty shelves. It’s hard to find bread, eggs and other basic items.
The country is also short on basic medicines, leaving some to die in hospitals and many to languish without proper treatment.
It’s an especially tragic situation because Venezuela has more oil reserves than any other country in the world. Plus one of its neighbors, Brazil, is among the world’s top food exporters.
Venezuela has denied food and humanitarian aid from groups like Amnesty International and the United Nations. Amnesty officials contest that the government doesn’t want to accept aid because that would make the government look inadequate.
Despite its focus on debt payments, Venezuela is actually struggling to pay those bills too. With oil prices having plunged in the last two years, Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, is next to broke. In April, Schlumberger, which provides oil-drilling equipment and technology, said it would lower its services to Venezuela due to unpaid bills. With less drilling capability, Venezuela’s oil production has fallen to a 13-year low.
Now Venezuela’s government, led by President Nicolas Maduro, is trying to revamp the country’s agricultural sector, which long lacked significant investment, to address the food shortages, experts say.
Maduro issued a decree in July that would force citizens to work on state-owned farms for up to 60 days and perhaps longer “if circumstances merit.” So far, there have been no cases of forced labor, but Amnesty claims the decree amounts to “forced labor.”
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Going Hungry in Venezuela – Desperate Humanitarian Needs – Women & Children
This Venezuela mother eats so little that she cannot breastfeed her baby.
29 July 2016 – It’s one thing to talk to people you’ve never met before who are suffering from hunger, and it’s a completely different thing when they are from your own family, as the BBC’s Vladimir Hernandez discovered when he returned to his native Venezuela to report on its failure to get food on people’s tables.
Travelling through the country this month I saw endless queues of people trying to buy food – any food – at supermarkets and other government-run shops.
I was stopped at a roadblock in the middle of the countryside by people who said they had eaten nothing but mangoes for three days.
I saw the hopeless expression of a mother, who had been eating so little that she was no longer able to breastfeed her baby.
I met a woman affectionately known as la gorda – “the fat one” – whose protruding cheekbones indicated just how much weight she had lost in the last year.
I felt sympathy for all these people, but it was my family who really brought it home to me.
My brother told me all his trousers were now too big. My father – never one to grumble – let slip that things were “really tough”. My mother, meanwhile, confessed that sometimes she only eats once a day. They all live in different parts of Venezuela, but none of them is getting enough to eat. It’s a nationwide problem.
A study by three of the country’s main universities indicates that 90% of Venezuelans are eating less than they did last year and that “extreme poverty” has jumped by 53% since 2014.
There are a number of causes – shortages of basic goods, bad management, a host of speculators and hoarders, and a severe drop in the country’s oil income.
Plus, of course, the highest inflation rate in the world.
The country’s official inflation rate was 180% in December, the last time a figure was made public, but the IMF estimates it will be above 700% by the end of the year
In an attempt to stop speculators and hoarders, the government years ago fixed the price of many basic goods, such as flour, chicken, or bread. But Venezuelans can only buy the goods at these fixed prices once a week, depending on the final digit of the number on their national identity card. If it’s 0 or 1, for example, then you’re allowed to buy on Mondays. For 2 or 3, it’s Tuesdays, and so on.
Because there is a risk of the goods running out, people often arrive at supermarkets in the early hours of the morning, or even earlier. At 6am one morning in Caracas, I met a man who had already been in the queue for three hours. It was pouring with rain, and he didn’t have an umbrella.
“I’m hoping to get rice, but sometimes I’ve queued and then been unable to buy anything because the rice runs out before I get in,” he said.
Even if they are lucky, shoppers are only allowed a restricted amount of items per day. Those who can’t get enough have to wait a full week until their turn comes round again – the tills will automatically reject anyone’s shopping if they arrive on the wrong day.
Media captionPolice surround reporter Vladimir Hernandez and order him to stop filming in a supermarket where shoppers have been queuing for 12 hours
As inflation rises, the incentive grows for people to queue to buy these goods at regulated prices and then sell them on the black market, where a pack of flour can cost 100 times more. The government has promised to crack down on the practice, but so far hasn’t been able to stop it.
For years this oil-rich nation has been increasing food imports in an attempt to guarantee a supply of basic goods, but critics say that price controls and the nationalisation programme of the late president, Hugo Chavez, contributed to the current crisis.
President Nicolas Maduro, who was elected by a slim margin three years ago, after Chavez died, has also had to deal with a drop in oil prices that has reduced the country’s foreign earnings by about two-thirds.
His latest step has been to create Local Committees of Supplies and Production, better known by the Spanish acronym, CLAP.
The CLAPs essentially mean that the government will stop sending imported food to supermarkets and start handing it over to local community councils.
These entities will register people in their community, assign them a day for shopping, and sell them a plastic bag filled with a number of goods such as flour, pasta and soap, at a fixed price. You cannot choose what you want to buy. You just get what you are given in the bag.
“But this will only be available once a month!” a young mother, Liliana, exclaimed at the roadblock manned by people eating nothing but mangoes.
She admitted to going to bed in tears on days when she had been unable to give her two children any dinner.
In western Venezuela, in the oil-rich province of Zulia, I visited several small towns where people didn’t know what they would eat the following day.
“We’ve always been poor here, that’s true, but we’ve never been hungry,” said Zulay Florido, a community leader in her 50s.
“Since (President) Maduro took power we are in a very bad situation. We call it here ‘the Maduro diet’.
“When Chavez was in power this didn’t happen.”
In Zulia, food was already in the hands of the community councils rather than the supermarkets.
The ultimate aim of the CLAPs is to create self-sustaining communities, where people grow their own food.
I was taken to one of these places by Alejandro Armao, a member of a colectivo – a group of hardcore government supporters, often armed, who are sometimes accused of acts of violence against opposition activists.
Armao introduced me to several colectivo members in a slum called Catia. They appeared to be armed, and were carrying walkie-talkies.
After threatening to kick me out of the area, they agreed in the end to show me what the CLAP was aiming to achieve. I was taken to see a barren field – “which we aim to have ready for crops in eight months” – and several chili plants waiting to be planted.
It was, to say the least, disheartening.
I thought of my mother, and wondered whether this could be the solution for people like her, struggling to eat properly three times a day.
My mother, who’s a staunch government supporter, truly believes it is.
“It will take time but it will happen,” she says.
But I cannot help wondering whether other Venezuelans will be as patient.
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Venezuela – Acute Humanitarian Disaster – Hunger – Lack of Services – Protests – Women
People argue with members of the National Guard as they try to line in front of a supermarket in Caracas on June 2, 2016. RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP/Getty Images
Liliana Rojas shows her empty refrigerator at her home in the poor neighborhood of Catia, Caracas, June 2, 2016. RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP/Getty Images
June 20, 2016 – Hungry Venezuelans are increasingly protesting and fighting against the serious shortages of food in what they describe as a spiraling and serious humanitarian crisis.
“I can see the consequences of the massive shortage of food everywhere”, said Carlos Elias, a young Venezuelan from San Cristobal who spoke to NBC News via e-mail. Elias, who goes to college in the U.S., is home for the summer and grappling with a tense situation. “I saw myself in lines that go beyond 6 blocks, people burning tires, and protesting against the government, but it is not vandalism as the government says, it is desperation and anger”, he said.
A recent New York Times article cited a recent assessment of living standards by Simón Bolívar University, which found that 87 percent of Venezuelans say they do not have money to buy enough food. The article also cited a study from the Center for Documentation and Social Analysis that found that Venezuelans spend over 70 percent of their monthly wages on food.
A woman who is a native of Venezuela and is currently living in the U.S. is in her country visiting. She told NBC Latino via texting what she is seeing. “A jar of Nutella that costs $4 in the U.S. costs $24 in Venezuela — the economy has become unstable and unsustainable for those who don’t have economic means,” she said, preferring not to give her name.
Venezuelans are restricted as to when they can go to the supermarket. But they complain that once they obtain their allotted ticket, they have to wait in long lines for high-priced products and near empty shelves.
“When walking in the streets you see how stressed people are with the situation, and even though some cities have more problems than others, there is a common reality, it does not matter if you are rich or poor the shortage is affecting everyone equally”, Elias said.
Recently, Venezuelans have been storming supermarkets and taking whatever they can in order to survive. Food delivery trucks are being ambushed and robbed before they make it to the supermarket.
“The controlled prices are not working. They are only causing those both with money and without money to starve from hunger”, said the woman who preferred to remain anonymous.
The Associated Press has reported that the shortages are affecting other aspects of daily life; 40 percent of teachers skip classes to go stand in food lines.
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, but falling oil prices as well as the government’s mishandling of the economy has resulted in one of the world’s highest inflation rates.
Among the top countries in the list for the world’s most miserable economy, Venezuelans have been grappling with the effects of this off-the-charts inflation. Due to hunger, the worsening crime situation, including a high murder rate and violence, many families have had to say goodbye to loved ones.
“We need the world’s attention and those outside this frontier to understand that we are not a democracy right now, so we need to recover democracy in Venezuela with the help of those around us,” Elias said.
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Venezuela’s Failing Hospitals – Dying Babies – Country in Crisis
By NICHOLAS CASEYMAY 15, 2016 – Photos by Meridith Kohut
Barcelona, Venezuela — By morning, three newborns were already dead. The day had begun with the usual hazards: chronic shortages of antibiotics, intravenous solutions, even food. Then a blackout swept over the city, shutting down the respirators in the maternity ward. Doctors kept ailing infants alive by pumping air into their lungs by hand for hours. By nightfall, four more newborns had died.
Broken incubators on the maternity floor of Luis Razetti Hospital, where seven newborns died one recent day.
Patients awaiting emergency care filled a hallway at Luis Razetti Hospital.
The economic crisis in this country has exploded into a public health emergency, claiming the lives of untold numbers of Venezuelans. It is just part of a larger unraveling here that has become so severe it has prompted President Nicolás Maduro to impose a state of emergency and has raised fears of a government collapse.
Hospital wards have become crucibles where the forces tearing Venezuela apart have converged. Gloves and soap have vanished from some hospitals. Often, cancer medicines are found only on the black market. There is so little electricity that the government works only two days a week to save what energy is left.
At the University of the Andes Hospital in the mountain city of Mérida, there was not enough water to wash blood from the operating table. Doctors preparing for surgery cleaned their hands with bottles of seltzer water.
“It is like something from the 19th century,” said Dr. Christian Pino, a surgeon at the hospital.
The figures are devastating. The rate of death among babies under a month old increased more than a hundredfold in public hospitals run by the Health Minis
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