Yoli Cabeza was sent from one hospital to another before finally giving birth to her daughter Yusmari in the corridor of a maternity ward because her contractions came quicker than medical help.
The 37-year-old was diagnosed with a high-risk pregnancy but that didn’t spare her from Venezuela’s medical “roulette” — the practice of referring patients from hospital to hospital due to a lack of personnel, supplies or sanitary conditions.
Cabeza said she “did the tour of every hospital in” Ciudad Guyana, the biggest town in the state of Bolivar, before returning to the place she started at, the Negra Hipolita maternity unit where “they took me in.”
Her case isn’t rare.
At the beginning of November, a woman was filmed giving birth to her son squatting by a tree in front of the biggest hospital in Bolivar.
Venezuela is in the midst of an economic meltdown triggered by mismanagement and a slump in oil prices followed by US sanctions.
The United Nations says some 2.3 million people have fled Venezuela since 2015 and amongst them have been many doctors.
According to a study by a dozen non-profits, some 22,000 doctors, more than half the former total, emigrated between 2012 and 2017.
More than 6,000 nurses (74 per cent of that industry’s workforce) and 6,600 lab technicians have left while there’s a shortage of 90 per cent of necessary medicines and supplies.
Often, patients are turned away “because there are no surgical materials, no anaesthesiologists. They don’t even have chlorine to clean the cubicles,” said Silvia Bolivar, a nurse at Concepcion Palacios, the biggest maternity unit in the capital Caracas.
Pregnant women are sometimes expected to bring their own disinfectant and garbage bags.
The effect has been devastating.
Yusmari Vargas, 24, was suffering from pre-eclampsia, a condition marked by high blood pressure that can develop into a more serious one that puts both the mother and baby’s lives at risk.
When she arrived at the maternity unit, it was closed. The hours passed, the contractions became stronger and her baby ended up on the floor, welcomed into the world with a bump to its head.
“When he fell, they didn’t even help me pick him up, there was nothing to cut the umbilical cord. It was a mess,” she said. — AFP
Plableysa Ostos, Margioni Bermudez
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