Dying Infants and No Medicine: Horrifying pictures of Venezuela’s Failing Hospitals

The day had begun with the usual hazards: three newborns were already dead, chronic shortages of antibiotics, intravenous solutions, even food. 

Lack of supplies: Jugs and soda bottles that doctors at Luis Razetti Hospital rigged to treat patients with broken legs in Puerto la Cruz

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.

“The death of a baby is our daily bread,” said Dr. Osleidy Camejo, a surgeon in the nation’s capital, Caracas, referring to the toll from Venezuela’s collapsing hospitals.

Horrific: Jose Villarroel waits for hours in an emergency operating room at Luis Razetti Hospital in Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela, in April

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.

Julio Rafael Parucho, who suffered a serious head injury, and has had to wait a year for a follow-up operation because of surgeons

“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 Ministry, to just over 2 percent in 2015 from 0.02 percent in 2012, according to a government report provided by lawmakers.

The rate of death among new mothers in those hospitals increased by almost five times in the same period, according to the report.

Picture Credit: New York Times