Hospitals in Venezuela

While Venezuela's caudillo is being treated in Cuba by doctors flown from different countries, patients at the CHET, the only general hospital in my city of 1.2 million people, have been since Sunday without running water. Their relatives have to take water bottle to the hospital to wash them. Of course, they also have to bring most of the medicine and medical material used on their loved ones, including syringes and gloves. That public hospital was built over 40 years ago. I was born there. Chávez's foreign enablers long wrote about the great advances in public health care in Venezuela - all rubbish.

In spite of Venezuela still going through the longest oil boom ever - thanks to China, India and the Peak Oil - the government hasn't built a single new general hospital in Valencia. There are a few tiny health centres plus a new maternity hospital built by the regional (non-Chavista) government. Most of the few hospitals built in the last 13 years are half empty, Potemkin villages in the "socialist revolution". If this is with a barrel of oil well over 100 dollars, I can't imagine what it would be if the military go on ruling the country for a few years more.

The oncology department of that hospital has been closed for some time as well.

Meanwhile, Russian, Chinese and Brazilian doctors treat the caudillo who tweets all the time the hash #viviremosyvenceremos, "we will live and win". The chuzpah.