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PLUMBER FREDDY HERRERA broke his leg in four places when he crashed his motorbike nine months ago. But his real troubles started when he got to hospital.
The doctors fixed the leg. Then they had to operate 13 times more to cut out infections caught in the stinking hospital where he languishes.
With open rubbish bins, flies in the corridors and rotting corpses stacked in the morgue, this public hospital in the Coche district of Caracas could be the set of a horror film.
But it is all too real: the dirty, miserable human face of Venezuela’s economic and political crisis.
There aren’t many doctors here — just 18 for a community of 150,000 people. Medics warn harmful bacteria has grown to resist the few antibiotics that are available.
“I’m scared that after fighting this for so long, they will come and tell me they have to take off my leg because the bacteria have infected the bone,” Herrera says.
I don’t want to go up to the operating theatre anymore. Every time I do, I come back feeling worse.
Dying in agony
Coche’s is one of hundreds of Venezuelan hospitals that are overcrowded and desperately undersupplied.
Traumatologist Efraim Vegas, 29, says he recently watched helplessly as a young man died writhing in agony from a gunshot wound to the knee.
“I had no serum, no spare blood, no morphine,” he says.
We have had various people who have ended up having amputations because there isn’t enough antiseptic in the operating theatres.
The hospital’s emergency room only has five saline drips for use during the night. During that shift, up to 20 patients arrive.
“I feel like my hands are tied,” Vegas says. “I cannot heal people. I just give them relief and help them as they die.”
Rotting flesh
Venezuela’s economy has crashed in line with the price of crude oil — the export on which the state relies.
As its revenues have plunged, imports of medical supplies have dried up.
In the Coche hospital, the oxygen tubes are washed and re-used. So are the supposedly disposable electric scalpels.
One of its three operating theatres is closed due to contamination.
Drops of fresh blood spot the floor at the entrance to the hospital’s morgue.
It is made to house four corpses, but recently it has held up to 12 at a time.
“Sometimes the bodies are in there for up to three days. It is terrible,” says Vegas.
It all smells of rotting flesh. This is like a hospital in wartime.
The hospital has no specialists in infectious diseases.
Instead, the doctors identify infections by the smell of the wounds, says one of them, who asked not to be named.
He says he helped save a man who had been shot in the head and left in the street. The wound was infested with worms when he arrived.
Flies breeding
More than 80% of Venezuela’s hospital departments are lacking surgical supplies, according to the Venezuelan Health Observatory. More than 74% of the departments are short of medicine.
The observatory calculates that 100,000 hospital beds are needed, but only about 15,000 are functioning.
The political opposition blames socialist President Nicolas Maduro’s economic management for the chaos. They accuse the government of corruption and incompetence.
Maduro insists the shortages are temporary. He has vowed to restart national production of medical supplies to replace the lost imports.
The socialist government says it has invested $250 billion in healthcare over the past 13 years, particularly in poor areas.
Some of the equipment bought with that money did get to Coche. But doctors here say much of it is useless now because of a lack of spare parts.
Only one of the hospital’s four elevators is working.
The pit below the shaft is filled with stagnant water where flies breed, says the lift operator Rosa Herrera, 61.
“In here we take up food, patients, the dead, people who have been shot,” she says. “Plus the rubbish and the human waste.”
“Being a doctor in Venezuela is an act of heroism”
Vegas earns the equivalent of about $60 a month. He can only afford to eat twice a day and says he has lost 26 kilograms in weight during the crisis.
For their trouble, he and his colleagues face robberies and threats from patients and their families.
“Being a doctor in Venezuela is an act of heroism,” says the doctor who asked not to be named.
The country’s Medical Federation says 13,000 doctors have left the country since Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez, the father of Venezuela’s “socialist revolution,” came to power in 1999.
Now Vegas says he himself may follow.
Freddy Herrera cannot go anywhere for now. He lies, swatting at the flies, hoping he will one day walk away.
His wife used to come and see him, but her visits are fewer now. She has started treatment for cancer.
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So much for “The Socialist revolution “
How’s capitalism working out for the billions across the world in abject poverty?
It has worked out quite well for countries that have embraced the free market in combination with open, secular and democratic forms of government. Far better than the countries that have tried to implement far left ideals in any case.
Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system
Really? How come 62 individuals now hold the same wealth as the poorest half of the globes population?
Capitalism of course allows millions to die annually from malnutrition and starvation becasuse there is no profit to be made in feeding them. This is the harsh reality of a system based on profit accumulation.
And of course billions have no healthcare service at all becasuse there is no profit in treating them. There is of course large profits to be made in making them sick which is why Big tobacco are aggressively peddling their poison across the poorest regions of the planet.
You’re beloved “working class” in Venezuela resorted to eating Zoo animals earlier this year Wally.
Millions died in the Ukraine and China due to starvation caused by extreme socialist policies Billy. The industrial advancement of the country in both cases was placed above the lives of millions of people. You now have rampant food shortages in Venezuela as much of the food production has been shut down due to government mismanagement. You really need to take those rose tinted glasses off.
Billy – because those 62 worked for it in a system that encourages and rewards enterprise and initiative. As opposed to some left wing hellhole where everybody expects or gets everything the same and there’s no incentive to pull yourself up because your earnings will only be taken from you and shared out amongst others who don’t work as hard.
Billy, stop with the false narrative.
Billy. The poorest half are doing ok. I’m one of those poor. I’m a pensioner. I live much better than the majority of people in Venezuela
Nonsense Jason. Neither China nor the Ukraine were socialist. Socialism means democratically managing the resources of society to provide for the welfare of all. Therefore any occurrence of starvation while the means are there to feed people is by definition the polar opposite to socialism. Capitalism is contrast will allow millions to starve unless it can profit from feeding them. We have our own experience of that here in the potato famine. And that is the system you cheerlead for.
Ahaaa…whataboutery Billy, whataboutery. The first refuge of someone with no answers. We’re not talking about the world, we’re talking about Venezuela.
Jumperoo, Most of the obscene fortunes are made by the privatisation of collective resources. Theft in other words. Look to Carlos Slim or the Russian oligarchs to see how the nations are looted to enrich the billionaire class. But you knock yourself out polishing your own cage.
Just had a walk through Dublin centre just now. There’s a homeless person on the ground every hundred yards or so. Fair play to Jason and the free marketeers. Take a bow.
@billy. A helluva lot better than your socialist eutopia, Venezuela.
Billy… As usual talking rubbish
I watch this videos from the 50s and 60s when Venezuela’s GDP per capita was amongst the top 10 and it makes me so sad. I belong to the last generation who grew up in what was a great country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkgFDzexcXM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cJSHOYHUUk
It was a great country for your privileged class Juan. Not so much for the majority. That’s how capitalism works.
@Billy Mooney: Ah yes, blame those damn Kulaks Wally.
@Billy Mooney: Yes Wally, you ARE Venezuelan like me right? Someone flipping burgers in Venezuela had the same purchasing power as someone flipping burgers in the UK back then, if you read the official data published by the current government, the extreme poverty in Venezuela was below 10% during those years and had increased significantly since the late 1980s. Oh I forgot, you HAVE been in Venezuela, right?
And it’s great for the majority now right Wally (well, at least those that aren’t having to cross the border into Colombia to avoid starvation)?
Good point Juan, Billy/Wally likes to mouth off about representing the working class everywhere but he shows very little practical knowledge about the realities on the ground for most people. More importantly, he struggles to accept the failings of socialism and always has an excuse for them.
@Jason Culligan:
There is no doubt socialism has brought some of the greatest advancements for people in the last 100 years , but it has also brought some of it’s greatest atrocities.
There are not many people this side of the Atlantic advocating the kind of unfettered capitalism you see in the US, I certainly wouldn’t, but unfettered socialism is every bit as dangerous
Venezuela is in this crisis because the people were fooled into voting too far left. Maduro, (a previous bus driver!) was selected to be president by previous president Hugo Chavez & has refused to call elections because the Loony Left Socialist dictatorship will be destroyed in the ballot box. Venezuela has more oil than Saudi Arabia & used to be the 20th richest country in the world but both poor & rich are starving to death.
103 year-old woman spends 15 hours on a hospital trolley because there are no beds – oh wait, that’s Ireland. I was speaking to a Dublin primary school teacher whose school had raised loads of money for a school in Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan kids are being educated in a beautiful, state-of-the-art facility whilst the Dublin kids have been in prefabs for years. These types of articles are meant to make us feel grateful for what we’ve got, but, just as Venezulans deserve better, so do we.
Well said. The purpose of this article is to attack the idea that socialism is a viable alternative to the current system. Billions of course face a complete abscence of healthcare under the capitalist system. Venezuela’s problems primarily stem from the capitalist elite there who are deliberately sabotaging the country in an effort to oust Maduro’s government as they did previously with Chavez with the full support of the U.S. Socialism is by far the best way to deliver healthcare to all as Cuba has demonstrated over 50 years again despite the best efforts of the U.S. The choice facing us is socialism or barbarism.
Socialism does a fine job of attacking the idea of socialism by itself Billy. The fact that every socialist country has cracked within a century and the only one with any sort of longevity is the glorious North Korea should be a warning sign.
Anne marie. nicaravan is capitalist.
What socialist countries are you talking about exactly? There has been only one nation where the working class rook power and began to democratically manage resources to provide for everyone. That was Russia from 1917 to 23 before the revolution fell to massive external attack from the forces of every developed capitalist nation on the planet and internally under Stalins power grab.
Billy why don’t you tell us where Socialism works ?
Leave Wally alone.
He was at the Davenport Hotel all day at the AAA annual conference.
At least 100 people attended. AAA going from strength to strength. Onwards and upwards.
Up the revolution, comrades!
@billy Venezuela’s socialism worked only because of its oil resources. When the price of oil fell through the floor, then so did the economy. But of course, you blame capitalist elites, makes you feel better about the abject failure of socialist policies when the money runs out.
Murphey, How would you know how many people were at the AAA conference? Were you there yourself? And please don’t tell us you heard the figure on Rte. We know the limitations of RTE numeracy skills from their reporting of the water charges marches.
@ Anne-Marie I smell bull. What’s your source. Who was the 103 year old, and which hospital was this. Also, you know all about schools in Nicaragua, do you. You’ve seen this beautiful, state-of-art facility, have you. Describe it.
Ah, so they failed because they didn’t practice the right kind of socialism? I called it in one of my previous comments. It’s never socialism’s fault that it failed, it’s either the people didn’t practice the ‘right kind’ of socialism or it was external actors to blame. You really are completely deluded.
@Can’t Think of One: It was Tullamore…but well done on keeping on top of things – refuses to believe all news if it doesn’t come from the US Dept of State.
This is the country Obama named as an ‘extraordinary threat to the security of the US’, before slapping more sanctions on to them.
Why does the UN regularly support sanctions as a method of regime change. It’s siege warfare no matter how you sanitise it. The philosophy is to drive the population into extreme misery to encourage some form of political change. In other words, make enough poor people suffer and die, keeping your own hands clean, and you won’t have to intervene directly. It’s more immoral than many of the regimes they want to depose.
And all because they wont let the americans have the oil. At least they’ve not been ‘liberated’ yet?
@Billy So the successes of non-socialist countries are really down to socialism, and the numerous disasters suffered by socialist countries are really the fault of capitalism. Yes..yes, that makes perfect sense. I can’t for the life of me figure out why you don’t put your money where your mouth is, leave this corrupt capitalist hellhole and go live somewhere nice, like North Korea. You’re not happy here (it’s pretty discernible), so maybe you would be there. What do you think?
The AA just got to Billy before the Moonies or the Scientologists. There is no debating with someone who can only see the world through an ideological peep-hole.
@Can’t Think of One:
Blinkers doesn’t even come close to it. Only a few days ago Wally was blaming the USA for the fact that Fidel Castro refused to hold a presidential election for half a century. – not quite sure how that one works…
Is aaa in power in Venezuela? sounds like it.
Where’s petr tarasov on this? He still thinks Venezuela is on the right track.
Why? Have the Yanks not deposed 80+ governments since WWII? Did someone just make that history up?
Yes, and they saved Western Europe from falling to the Reds after World War 2. You mightn’t be willing to admit it, but we owe them for that. Big league.
@billy. You are hopelessly out of your depth here.
Western Europe falling to the Reds? You understand of course that the ‘Reds” prevented Europe falling to the Nazis while the mighty U.S stood on the sidelines until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour?
@Can’t Think of One: They did??????????
@Kerry Yes, yes they did. Ever heard of the Marshall Plan? Didn’t think so. Will you please go easy on the question marks, other people need to use them from time to time and we’ll end up running out if you keep on like that.
@Billy Europe did fall to the Nazis. I’m surprised at you Billy, you always seemed so well-read.
The US didn’t ‘stand to the sidelines’ and anyone who’s opened a book on WW2 history would know this. Even though they refused to directly participate until Pearl Harbour, they were sending millions of tons of supplies to the Allied Nations before officially entering the war.
Does Venezuela not have it’s own currency? Why don’t they just print more money, bound to work……
So you would take guidance instead from the billionaire crotch grabber Trump?
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lol, how do people fall for the same thing over and over and over…? Whenever Washington rings that bell, Ireland starts to salivate.
Tell you what Guy, why don’t you head over to Venezuela yourself and find out if there’s some truth to what we hear about the place or whether it’s really a socialist utopia that our governments just don’t want us to know about….
@Avina Laaf: Why? Did you visit Venezuela, Avina? Or would you be one of the many that I refer to in my 2nd paragraph in that you’re basing your knowledge of Venezuela on websites from the US and other countries that base their news on American news agencies…like Irish media outlets?
“The economic situation in the country is so dire that even hospitals are being badly affected.” sounds like Ireland….
God for a minute there I thought they were talking about our hospitals… IF things don’t improve we will end up like this!
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