Venezuelans Suffer Amid Crumbling Health System

[Sdiver]

I think we can file this under ... "We told ya so."

In between "No Duh" and "Are you really that fucking stupid."

Venezuelans Suffer Amid Crumbling Health System

As country’s economy struggles, lack of hospital funding and widespread shortages of medicine and surgical supplies put patients at risk

CARACAS, Venezuela—His heart failing fast, Pedro Gonzalez checked into one of Venezuela’s leading public hospitals in September, hoping for a new heart valve to save his life. He prayed day and night for a successful surgery, clutching a blanket embroidered with an image of the Virgin Mary.

In late November, the director of cardiovascular surgery at the University Hospital sent out letters to the cardiology ward’s patients, telling them they were being discharged. The reason cited: a dearth of operating-room supplies—no catheters, no working blood-processing machine, no heart valves.

A week later, as Mr. Gonzalez gave an emotional talk to young catechists at the Catholic Church near his home, he collapsed and died in front of the altar. Mr. Gonzalez, a machinist at a state-run utility, was 39 and left behind a wife, Indimar Rivero, and an 8-year-old son.

“If they had found what they needed, surgical material and the valve, I believe that God and the doctors would have saved him,” said Ms. Rivero, who is deeply religious, as her husband was, and spends her free time giving catechism classes to children. “But in the end, they sent him home.”

Hospital administrators didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Free, quality health care was a centerpiece in the socialist system championed by late President Hugo Chávez—a right he guaranteed in a new constitution. But two years after Mr. Chávez’s death and 16 years after he took power, what the populist firebrand called a revolution is fast unraveling.

Inflation, at nearly 70%, is the highest in the world, and the International Monetary Fund says the economy will contract 7% this year. Widespread nationalizations and price controls have hobbled local industry, and currency controls starved the country of dollars provided by the state and needed to pay for imports. The result: shortages of everything from car parts to toilet paper and medical supplies in a country that produces few of its consumer goods.

Of all the myriad crises in Venezuela, none has so shattered the illusion of a government able to provide for its people than the collapse of health care. Interviews with more than 100 doctors, patients, medical industry personnel and former Health Ministry officials, as well as guided tours of public hospitals in three states, paint a picture of a system in crisis.

Affecting both public and private hospitals, the deficiencies are drastically altering people’s health care—to the point of ratcheting up preventable deaths, according to doctors and medical associations.

Drugs from aspirin to antibiotics, insulin to anesthetics, are scarce. All manner of equipment—X-ray machines, ultrasound scanners and defibrillators—is often out of service because of a lack of spare parts.

In little more than two months, from October to early January, 12 other patients treated at the University Hospital who needed heart surgery died. Liz Giraldo, 38, who waited seven months for a heart valve, died in the emergency room, said the daughter she left behind, Erlys Daza, 19.

Living with remorse

“What you feel is a high level of helplessness,” said Dr. Marcos Durand, who along with other doctors here outlined how heart patients died, one after another. “It’s looking at the family and saying, ‘He’s going to die. There is nothing that can be done.’ ”

Dr. Gaston Silva, the head of the cardiovascular surgery unit who sent Mr. Gonzalez and the others home in November, said all the doctors live with remorse. “Patients who went to the hospital to find life instead found death,” he said.

Health Minister Nancy Perez didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. Offices within the health ministry that deal with cancer, the administration of public hospitals, health care in poor neighborhoods and health data also didn’t return calls or emails.

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Rest of the article here .... http://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuel...tem-1426265474

[Pete]

Never happen here. Our socialist left is smarter than they are and know how to do it right.

[Team Sergeant]

Progressive Left-wing socialist corruption is what's destroying Venezuela

And I believe it's too late for that country.....

Anyone read todays news, Venezuela is conducting military exercises in prep for the American "threat".......

Like a left-wing wacko is going to attack another left-wing wacko.....


Venezuela, Viva Revolution!