Venezuela Healthcare Crisis: Under Maduro, Medical Shortages Reaching Critical Level

[brooklynite]

Source: International Business Times

The pint-sized patients didn’t look like your everyday protesters. Frail children and teenagers, donning facemasks and hunched over in wheelchairs, clutched signs as they gathered with parents this week in a small crowd in front of the José Manuel de los Rios hospital in Caracas, Venezuela. They pleaded for help with a system they said was failing them. “J.M. RIOS HOSPITAL IN EMERGENCY,” one protest sign blared. “CANCER DOESN’T WAIT,” read another.

It was a demonstration for a desperate situation. The J.M. de los Rios hospital, Venezuela’s pre-eminent medical center for children, was running out of drugs. Its supply of 19 different chemotherapy medicines had gone dry, leaving several young cancer patients untreated for more than two weeks.

But if the situation at J.M. de los Rios was alarming, it wasn’t shocking. It’s the latest development in a long unfolding Venezuelan healthcare crisis that has reached new, severe heights this year. Accessible healthcare was one of the hallmarks of former President Hugo Chávez's socialist revolution, but rampant medicine shortages, aging equipment and an exodus of medical professionals have converged into a slow-motion emergency that has sharply accelerated over the past few months. Cancer patients, pregnant women, those with organ transplants and HIV-positive Venezuelans alike have been left scrambling for care while a black market for pharmaceutical drugs thrives. Venezuela is already staggering under the weight of a sputtering economy and rising political tensions, but human rights groups say the health situation is putting the country on a fast track toward a humanitarian crisis, as well.

“It’s been getting worse every month. It’s getting worse every day,” said Francisco Valencia, director of Codevida, a Caracas-based coalition of organizations dedicated to promoting health rights in Venezuela.

Read more: http://www.ibtimes.com/venezuela-healthcare-crisis-under-maduro-medical-shortages-reaching-critical-level-2052108

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Where's the brotherly solidarity from Cuba?

[Igel]

1. The brotherly solidarity includes

having a letter from Castro basically saying that to welcome the inauguration of diplomatic relations with the old enemy they should sue our asses for economic losses.

They raise the flag and instead of stars and stripes it's a series of concentric red and white rings, otherwise known as a bull's eye.

I assume that's just a friendly bit of diplomatese for, "Please, Congress, remove the economic sanctions." Perhaps Mr. Kerry could be so kind as to translate the fraternal greetings.

[7962]

2. Hilarious! Blame the US for their decades of failure!

Dont forget all the people & companies who can sue THEM for unlawfully taking their property.

And the downhill slide of the "Revolution" continues......as most knew it would.

[sulphurdunn]

4. We import 10% of our oil

from Venezuela. The country is our 4th largest importer of oil. Stability there should be of primary concern to us. If women and children are going without proper medical care, why aren't we sending, food, drugs, equipment and doctors to help, politics aside? Of course Russia and Iraq are close behind. What do they have in common? Canada, Saudi Arabia and Mexico are 1,2 and 3. Makes you wonder.

[christx30]

5. Because every time we've sent anything,

we get screwed.
And doctors don't want to work there because of the high crime, and the fact that they probably won't get paid.
All of the problems are self inflicted. They could help themselves so much if they wanted to, but choose to keep going as they are. Not much we can do.
Not that it should be up to us. They have a huge amount of oil there. They should be one of the richest countries on the Earth.

[FLPanhandle]

3. Well, if you don't pay your bills, companies will quickly learn to stop selling to you

Maduro has no concept of how to run an economy and the Venezuelan people are the ones who will suffer.