Venezuelan hospitals are even worse off than we knew, an independent poll shows

[Ganerumo]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/03/19/venezuelan-hospitals-are-even-worse-off-than-we-knew-an-independent-poll-shows/?utm_term=.da1a6d5e12a5

Doctors in more than 80 percent of the hospitals polled said their emergency rooms were experiencing intermittent failures. In 15 percent of hospitals, doctors said operating rooms weren’t functioning, and in 80 percent they said rooms were often inoperative.
Seventy-nine percent of hospitals said they lacked basic surgical supplies such as gauze, gloves and compresses, and 84 percent reported having no catheters and tubes.
Ninety-four percent reported a frequent absence of X-ray equipment; 86 percent said they often could not perform ultrasounds; 96 percent said they often couldn’t offer CT scans; and 100 percent said their laboratories were not fully functioning given the scarcity of reagents.
Public hospitals in Caracas provide a window on these numbers.  A resident at the decrepit Caracas University Hospital recently told The Washington Post that the idea that public health here is free is “a pathetic farce.” His patients, he said, have to pay for and bring their own surgical instruments, drugs and food.
Mayra Linares, a 41-year-old woman with sickle cell anemia who was hospitalized in late January because the blood transfusions she needed weren’t available, had to bring her own bedsheets and buy syringes and catheters. Ten days passed before she got one of three units of blood she needed, but during that period, she contracted an in-hospital infection.

Emphasis mine.

[Zephyrs]

It's really sad to see all the predictions made about this a few years ago coming to fruition.

The worst part is that the ramifications of this will be felt for decades afterwards. You could fix the country tomorrow, and the lingering illnesses and associated costs will linger. Healthcare is one of those things where you simply cannot allow your country to get behind on, because once you do, you will rapidly fall into a hole that is very difficult to dig out of.

[KILLTHIS]

If you think about it and realize that they may even lack basic cleaning supplies, these hospitals become death traps in no time.

[Gazhelmet]

That's practically own death sentence where if you gets sick or having an accident here is practically you end because there is nothing in the hospitals to save you by not having even the simple pill for the flu. We are at lower level such as hospitals in countries at war (or much worse) There is also a deficit of doctors because more than one left. and not to mention the community doctors or Cuban doctors they do not have the remotest idea of the most basic medicine or how to cover a wound

You have to buy your own medical equipment to save yourself or your own medicines, which is practically non-existent here, or are too costly to be difficult (and also for the bastards who are earning a lot of money playing with the despair of the people) Much of the hospitals have many faults even the emergency generators are damaged or missing, and with the blackouts the doctors have to play superhumanly to try to save the patients, sometimes with luck, many times not. A lot of medical equipment is destroyed or damaged, the ambulances are damaged or dangerously insecure to transport patients in the absence of maintenance X-Ray Laboratories, Dialysis and other things are out of service or functioning inappropriately and no way to fix them because there are no technicians (many left the country or died)

The private clinics are the closest there are but they are excessively expensive, that only if you are rich, you are lucky but if you are not, you are fucked or is it better to go to Colombia or Brazil, to try to heal in their hospitals

If on one occasion my mother almost had a fight with the director of a hospital, to explain why some doctors were trying to force the relatives of a pregnant woman to use expired morphine for the operation but they did not take any responsibility if the baby is born with defects or the woman dies in the operation. I know family members who work in a hospital and many lett, even in my own experience (I worked outside a hospital selling orange juice before) as the family members left desperately running to look for the medicines or to break in tears to know that their son / husband / wife died

You do not know how many people have died every day, how too many newborns died seriously it's really depressing where you can not do anything only just sit down and cry of rage

But to Maduro and his government that's not important, because his own ego does not want to accept humanitarian aid because "That's pure lies and excuses!"