Dying Infants and No Medicine: Inside Venezuela’s Failing Hospitals [View all]

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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