Aid workers warn of infectious diseases, overwhelmed hospitals after Venezuela quakes

Aid groups warned Tues­day that Venezuela’s frag­ile health­care sys­tem is be­ing pushed to its lim­its near­ly a week af­ter two pow­er­ful earth­quakes, with dam­aged and un­der­staffed hos­pi­tals over­whelmed by the in­jured and de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions in the dis­as­ter zone caus­ing in­fec­tious dis­eases to spread.

The scores of in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic teams across Venezuela re­main fo­cused on the search for sur­vivors, with the gov­ern­ment death toll sur­pass­ing 1,700 and new bod­ies still be­ing hauled out from the rub­ble.

But a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis is al­ready un­fold­ing among the liv­ing. Unit­ed Na­tions agen­cies ex­pressed con­cern about the health ef­fects of thou­sands of dis­placed peo­ple sleep­ing for days in the open or in crowd­ed, un­san­i­tary shel­ters.

Venezue­lan of­fi­cials say that more than 15,800 peo­ple have been af­fect­ed by the earth­quakes — a fig­ure that re­flects the of­fi­cial num­ber of dis­placed peo­ple, U.N. refugee agency spokesper­son Car­lot­ta Wolf said on Tues­day. Sud­den­ly home­less Venezue­lans are sleep­ing in cars, parks and else­where with­out ad­e­quate emer­gency shel­ter avail­able.

Wolf said that num­ber would con­tin­ue to rise. Many of those dis­placed in the hard­est-hit state of La Guaira are suf­fer­ing from wide­spread food short­ages, she said.

At a me­dia brief­ing in Gene­va on Tues­day, World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion spokesper­son Chris­t­ian Lind­meier warned that dis­placed Venezue­lans with­out ac­cess to toi­lets, show­ers, soap or much nour­ish­ing food have be­come in­creas­ing­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the out­break of pre­ventable dis­eases like measles, giv­en the pop­u­la­tion’s low vac­ci­na­tion rates. Con­di­tions are ripe for wa­ter­borne in­fec­tions like dengue, yel­low fever and malar­ia to spread.

The Venezue­lan health­care sys­tem, strained by decades of un­der­in­vest­ment and years of eco­nom­ic cri­sis is “un­der ex­treme pres­sure now, with fa­cil­i­ties op­er­at­ing be­yond the ca­pac­i­ty of the surge of the trau­ma cas­es,” Lind­meier said.

Ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, last week’s earth­quakes dam­aged or oth­er­wise com­pro­mised 38 hos­pi­tals na­tion­wide. WHO said it so far has eval­u­at­ed 21 of those fa­cil­i­ties, three of which are no longer op­er­at­ing. An­oth­er six have sus­tained dam­age and the rest are now buck­ling un­der the in­flux of in­juries.

Many spe­cial­ist doc­tors are miss­ing in the ru­ins, in­clud­ing of­fi­cials in charge of ma­ter­ni­ty care in La Guaira, WHO said, com­pound­ing the chal­lenges to health care in a coun­try that 8 mil­lion peo­ple, in­clud­ing many doc­tors and nurs­es, have fled in re­cent years.

“Find­ings re­veal chaot­ic ser­vice de­liv­ery and pa­tient flow, marked by over­crowd­ing, grow­ing sur­gi­cal back­logs ... and a break­down in biosafe­ty mea­sures,” Lind­meier said. He added that “the col­lapse of foren­sic and morgue ser­vices and in­ad­e­quate ca­su­al­ty reg­is­tra­tion” has made it dif­fi­cult to gauge the scope of the dis­as­ter.

Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment, which has long re­tained con­trol over ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion, of­fers dai­ly ca­su­al­ty up­dates. Jorge Ro­dríguez, the pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, an­nounced Mon­day that the of­fi­cial toll stood at 1,719 peo­ple killed and 5,000 in­jured, and warned the pub­lic against shar­ing in­for­ma­tion that con­tra­dict­ed au­thor­i­ties.

Ex­perts say the of­fi­cial toll is like­ly a sig­nif­i­cant un­der­count, as many more peo­ple re­main miss­ing and hopes for find­ing sur­vivors di­min­ish with each pass­ing day.

NASA es­ti­mates that near­ly 59,000 build­ings have been dam­aged or de­stroyed by the earth­quakes, which would put the num­ber of peo­ple af­fect­ed by the quakes in the hun­dreds of thou­sands. The U.N. chil­dren’s agency, UNICEF, on Tues­day said 680,000 chil­dren are in need of hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance na­tion­wide.

Au­thor­i­ties have not of­fered an of­fi­cial count of miss­ing peo­ple, lead­ing many Venezue­lans to turn to non­govern­men­tal dig­i­tal data­bas­es to re­port their loved ones as miss­ing. One such reg­istry list­ed at least 43,220 peo­ple as miss­ing. —LA GUAIRA, Venezuela (AP)

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Sto­ry by JUAN PABLO AR­RÁEZ and IS­ABEL DE­BRE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Is­abel De­Bre re­port­ed from Buenos Aires, Ar­genti­na.