Tuesday 31 October 2017

Diphteria back in Venezuela


There is a rise if diphtheria cases now in Venezuela. The disease returned last year after 24 years gone. The country has an acute shortage of medicines. 

Some of my relatives in greater Valencia went yesterday to a vaccination centre but they could not get the vaccine: the centre ran out of material after treating 540 persons. My relatives  had still over 200 people in front of them and there were many more behind. The thing is: two people have died recently in Valencia from this disease, so there is fear. Chavistas would say it is all "capitalism's fault", Ceausescu style.

Early this year the health minister was sacked because she dared to do something health ministers had not done for some time under Chavismo: her ministry published the real numbers of child mortality and they showed what any decent physician or nurse or anyone related to health in Venezuela knew for a long time: things are getting worse.

Here you can see some WHO data from previous years about vaccination coverage in the world. Notice how the orange-yellowish circles indicating sub-optimal coverage start to pop up more frequently in Venezuela together with Haiti whereas things are mostly green in most other countries around, countries that were poorer before Chavismo arrived to Venezuela.

I wonder what Corbyn in Britain or Wagenknecht in Germany would say if journalists told them Venezuela is going through a health crisis it hadn't seen when the country had social democrats and Christian democrats in power, the democratic period preceding the election of military coupster Hugo Chavez. They would probably mumble something about economic war and, very clueless, about how things were worse before.


2 comments:

  1. This is a respiratory disease. Do Guyuana, and Brazil think it is going to stop at the border?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think Colombia is particularly worried about everything that is happening in Venezuela but the government is not sure what it can do.

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