Dying Infants and No Medicine: Inside Venezuela’s Failing Hospitals

[Bacchus4.0]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/world/americas/dying-infants-and-no-medicine-inside-venezuelas-failing-hospitals.html?_r=0

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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.

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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.
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“I doubt that anywhere in the world, except in Cuba, there exists a better health system than this one,” Mr. Maduro said.



stabbing victim awaits treatment



Yulitza Roa, 15, who has a brain tumor, is awaiting surgery that has been delayed because Luis Razetti Hospital does not have the needed scanning equipment

[COLGATE4]

1. Everybody should view the handiwork of the Chavistas who have turned

what was a first class Health system into something out of sub-saharan Africa.

[Bacchus4.0]

2. It was a wonderful country pre-Chavez. Look at it now nt

[COLGATE4]

4. It was! It's beyond pitiful to see what they've done with it.

Unbelievable. How a bunch of ignorant ideologues can screw up an entire country in 18 short years.

[Bacchus4.0]

6. I remember in Venezuela when supermarkets had food. I could walk into a store

and buy milk, eggs, and meat with Bolivares. Those were the days.

[COLGATE4]

7. Yep. And when Doctors could prescribe drugs to cure you

and hospitals actually had equipment and basic supplies. Oh, the Plutocratic nightmare Venezuela was.

[Zorro]

3. Tragic.

Wonder what the forum's resident Latam internet scholar has to say about this? I noticed that her page 1 thread flood doesn't have a single one about Venezuela.

Curious.

[COLGATE4]

5. No, we only discuss the 'successes' of the Chavistas, plus a little good

old fashioned 'the devil (or US or CIA or Colombia or Illuminati_ made them to it' when trying to excuse their many failures.

[Bacchus4.0]

8. Biggest story in Latin America now but someone doesn't want it to be nt