Venezuela - Healthcare crisis turning deadly?

With doctors fleeing the country in droves, Venezuela's public hospitals are in desparate shape - and declining daily.

CARACAS- But the systems current crisis comes as the country is awash in oil wealth, a windfall that critics say could be used to ease the problem. Instead Chavez is building a parallel health program called Barrio Adentro which features 11,000 neighborhood clinics staffed by mainly Cuban doctors.

Barrios Better Off - Ingaugurated nationwide in 2003 Barrio Adentro initially was so popular with poor people that it helped Chavez win a crucial 2004 referendum and hold on to power. It has brought basic healthcare to the barrios, with free exams and medicine as well as eye operations that have saved the sight of thousands, But the system siphons resouces and equipment away from the public hospitals, which have four-fifths of the nations 45,000 hospital beds and where the public still goes for emergency and maternity care, as well as for most major and elective surgeries.

The finances and organization Barrio Adentro are " a black box and not transparent so it is impossible to analyze it for efficiency, said Dr. Marino Gonzales, professor of Public Policy at Simon Bolivar University here.

A lack of openness has effected other facets of public health too. After the medical establishment blamed him for an outbreak of dengue fever last summer, Chavez halted weekly publication of an epidemiology report that for 50 years had tallied occurances of infectious diseases nationwide. Former Health Minister Rafael Orihuela contends the loss of the weekly report has deprived the government of information needed for a quick response to outbreaks of disease.

"I am not talking about a failure of the government to adopt innovations in health care" said Orihuela, a Chavez critic. I am talking about a failure to maintain basic healthcare standards.

By b bruce on Apr 9, 2008, 23:08 in Friendly Talkzone.

miamimike says on Apr 10, 2008, 00:11:

b bruce--here's the link to that whole story in its Entirety in today's miami herald:

Poorly paid doctors regularly demonstrate at hospitals from Puerto La Cruz in the northeast to Maracay in the industrial heartland, demanding back pay and protesting the lack of equipment and supplies. Others are leaving in droves for Spain, Australia or the Middle East, where they make 10 times the $600 monthly average salary they earn in public hospitals.

Venezuela's healthcare system was facing problems even before Chavez took office. The system has been riven with corruption, mismanagement and disorganization for decades. In addition, tropical conditions have made the country ripe for epidemics difficult for any government to control. An encephalitis outbreak in 1996 sickened 20,000 people.

But the system's current crisis comes as the country is awash in oil wealth, a windfall that critics say could be used to ease the problem. Instead, Chavez is building a parallel health program called Barrio Adentro, which features 11,000 neighborhood clinics staffed mainly by Cuban doctors.

Inaugurated nationwide in 2003, Barrio Adentro initially was so popular with the poor that it helped Chavez win a crucial 2004 referendum and hold on to power. It has brought basic healthcare to the barrios, providing free exams and medicine as well as eye operations that have saved the sight of thousands.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/latinamerica/la-fg-healt...

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." GW Bush

poco says on Apr 10, 2008, 00:24:

Read the first sentence and thought,, he needs to ask Cuba,, then,, he did !!!

I hope no one sends any anthrax letters,,, I mean if people started dying,, do anthrax spores thrive in tropical conditions,,, if things got really bad would they try to entice the doctors to return? How would they pay? 1000 bbls of oil to showup and 1 bbl per hour? Do they work overtime straight pay or is being a doctor considered supervisory personnel?

encephalitis,, isn't that what killed al capone?

"Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent" - Isaac Asimov

esanch36 says on Apr 10, 2008, 06:18:

and so the meltdown of Chavez's Venezuela continues.....

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries