Venezuela welcomes aid from CARICOM countries

An emo­tion­al Act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez has pub­licly thanked Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­tries for their hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid to the South Amer­i­can coun­try fol­low­ing the June 24 dou­ble earth­quake that killed thou­sands of peo­ple and left sev­er­al oth­ers home­less.

CARI­COM mem­ber states, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, Guyana, and Haiti, have dis­patched 88 con­tain­ers of emer­gency sup­plies, med­ical spe­cial­ists, and equip­ment. The joint ef­fort was loaded and shipped from Guyana

Ro­driguez says the re­gion­al re­sponse re­flects the strong bonds of friend­ship shared across the Caribbean and as she in­spect­ed the re­lief sup­plies on Tues­day, Ro­driquez, speak­ing through an in­ter­preter said she was deeply moved by the as­sis­tance pro­vid­ed through CARI­COM.

“I am moved be­cause I am among CARI­COM coun­tries, coun­tries of our Caribbean, who with great ef­fort co­or­di­nat­ed by Guyana have all sent aid to Venezuela. I want to thank the prime min­is­ters, Pres­i­dent Ir­fan Ali, the Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos, the Pres­i­dent of Suri­name, the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, of St. Kitts and Nevis, of St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, the Prime Min­is­ter of Be­lize.

“I al­so thank St. Lu­cia An­tigua and Do­mini­ca, well, for all this ef­fort to sup­port our peo­ple. Tru­ly, from the bot­tom of my heart, and on be­half of the Venezue­lan peo­ple, I thank you for this sup­port you are pro­vid­ing to our coun­try,” she said.

The Act­ing head of state said that the hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance is a pow­er­ful demon­stra­tion of re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion and broth­er­hood.

“Venezuela is in your hearts, but we know that you are al­so in our hearts be­cause at all times we have main­tained our close ties of friend­ship, co­op­er­a­tion and broth­er­hood. So on be­half of the gov­ern­ment, thank you.

“Haiti, who al­so sent doc­tors, 35 doc­tors and a field hos­pi­tal. We spoke about how Haiti will al­ways be with Venezuela and Venezuela will al­ways be with Haiti. It is marked in our his­to­ry and with that com­mit­ment to where we come from and who we are when we set our course to­ward the fu­ture,” Ro­driquez added.

The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) said Tues­day that near­ly three weeks af­ter the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes, the health re­sponse in Venezuela is en­ter­ing a crit­i­cal ear­ly re­cov­ery phase fo­cused on restor­ing es­sen­tial health ser­vices, strength­en­ing re­fer­ral net­works and pre­vent­ing sec­ondary pub­lic health emer­gen­cies.

Ac­cord­ing to PA­HO’s lat­est Sit­u­a­tion Re­port, which pro­vides an overview of the evolv­ing re­sponse, and the Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s ac­com­pa­ny­ing Pub­lic Health Sit­u­a­tion Analy­sis for Venezuela, the earth­quakes have claimed 4,333 lives, left 16,740 peo­ple in­jured, dis­placed 17,907 peo­ple and dam­aged 38 health fa­cil­i­ties.

PA­HO said that while emer­gency med­ical care and rapid as­sess­ments helped save lives in the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math, the pri­or­i­ty is now shift­ing to restor­ing health ser­vices, re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing dam­aged fa­cil­i­ties and en­sur­ing peo­ple con­tin­ue to re­ceive es­sen­tial care as re­cov­ery be­gins.

PA­HO said that as the re­sponse tran­si­tions in­to this new phase, it con­tin­ues to sup­port the Min­istry of Health, in­clud­ing through tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion and the co­or­di­na­tion of the Health Clus­ter, which brings to­geth­er 110 or­ga­ni­za­tions in­volved in the health re­sponse and is co-led by PA­HO and the In­ter­na­tion­al Res­cue Com­mit­tee. —CARA­CAS, Venezuela (CMC)