Warning from the Medical Federation: To get sick in Venezuela is to face death | via: El Carabobeno
Darsy Alvarado | Venezuela | April 24, 2023
Unofficial translation made by HumVenezuela…
98% of hospitals are virtually closed, 80% without wards, 97% laboratories without reagents, 90% inoperative beds, 83% without water and 90% without emergency power plants.
Getting sick in Venezuela means facing death because “98 percent of the hospitals are virtually closed, with inoperative wards, laboratories without reagents, without medicines or water”, warns the president of the Medical Federation, Douglas León Natera.
The physician presented a diagnosis of the country’s healthcare network of 301 hospitals and indicated that these health centers present:
80% inoperative wards
97% laboratories without reagents
90% inoperative beds
83% without water
90% lack emergency power plants.
The deterioration
“In the hospitals, doctors perform their work but without medicines, supplies or work equipment. There are no elevators, no stretchers, no ambulances and the infrastructure has been deteriorated for many years,” stated León Natera.
He cited the case of the Miguel Pérez Carreño hospital in Caracas, one of the most important in the country, where “patients have to buy and bring all the supplies and medicines to be attended by their relatives”.
The Periférico de Catia and the Hospital de Los Magallanes de Catia in the Sucre parish of the Caracas municipality of Libertador are in the same situation.
He mentioned that in the Luis Ortega Hospital (HLO) of Porlamar, the intensive care area has been closed for more than four years and with a deficit of medical personnel of 60%, according to a report of the Medical Association of Nueva Esparta.
For the last five years, the HLO has had a strong deficit of nurses, paramedics, waitresses, no urologist, no cardiovascular surgeon, no pediatric intensivists, no endocrinologists and no ophthalmologists, according to the report.
“The Venezuelan Medical Federation demands that the government of President Nicolás Maduro declare a hospital emergency and urgently initiate a recovery and provisioning plan for infrastructure, supplies, medicines, surgical, X-ray and laboratory equipment,” he insisted.