Venezuela’s Hospitals: In Need of Intensive Care
Venezuela’s hospitals are apparently being deprived of the necessary currency and import authorizations to purchase items such as gauze, surgical sutures, disposable diapers, catheters and pumps that administer drips.
Just as it is doing with the other sectors of the economy, the state is depriving healthcare professionals of what they need in order to service their patients.
From what I read in the news, over 350,000 Venezuelans are waiting for the necessary materials to arrive, so that they can undergo their programmed surgeries.
The way things currently look, medicine in Venezuela’s hospitals runs the grave risk of returning to pre-modern times.
Anesthetics are running low at another medical facility and are being saved for emergency procedures only. In other parts of the country, ambulance service has been discontinued and operating rooms have been shut down altogether.
Representatives of the private sector (although the shortages also affect public hospitals) asked President Nicolas Maduro to declare a humanitarian emergency in Venezuela.
One day after this request, the Venezuelan government played down the gravity of the situation. The doctor’s claims were called “disproportionate” and said that the government is in talks with all the parties involved.
The Health Minister Francisco Armada is willing to accept the existence of a health crisis in the country. The figures speak for themselves: nearly 90% of all medical supplies are imported. A hospital typically requires around 45, 000 different types of medical supplies and there are shortages in 35,000 of them. Distributors are no longer able to buy on credit from suppliers in other countries.
The private health sector feels that declaring a state of emergency would speed up the paperwork which is currently blocking access to currency and imports.
