Warnings of infectious diseases and overwhelmed hospitals after Venezuela quakes

Aid groups have warned 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, UN refugee agency spokesperson Carlotta Wolf said on Tuesday.

Suddenly homeless Venezuelans are sleeping in cars, parks and elsewhere without adequate emergency shelter available.

Ms 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 Organisation (WHO) spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said that displaced Venezuelans have become increasingly vulnerable to the outbreak of preventable diseases such as measles, given the population’s low vaccination rates, as well as waterborne illnesses including dengue, yellow fever and malaria now flaring in the disaster’s wake.

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”, Mr Lindmeier said.

According to the government, last week’s earthquakes damaged or otherwise compromised 38 hospitals nationwide.

WHO said it had so far evaluated 21 of those facilities, three of which were no longer operating. Another six had sustained damage and the rest were now buckling under a surge of trauma cases.

Many specialist doctors were missing in the ruins, including officials in charge of maternity care in La Guaira, WHO said, adding to the strain.

“Findings reveal chaotic service delivery and patient flow, marked by overcrowding, growing surgical backlogs… and a breakdown in biosafety measures,” Mr Lindmeier said, adding that the mayhem had caused “the collapse of forensic and morgue services and inadequate casualty registration”.

The government has offered daily casualty updates, reporting on Monday that the death toll stood at 1,719 people killed and 5,000 injured.

But experts say this is likely to be a significant undercount, as many more people remain missing and hopes for finding survivors diminish with each passing day.

Authorities have not offered any official count of missing people, and the earthquake’s damage to phone networks and other infrastructure has complicated even informal efforts to gauge the toll of those still buried under the rubble.

More than 50,000 people were reported missing on one non-governmental digital database, although it is unclear how many of them have been found.