Venezuelan medics fear infections from quake injuries as search for untold dead continues
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A week after Venezuela’s devastating twin earthquakes, doctors on Wednesday said the biggest dangers now facing survivors are untreated wounds and infectious diseases.
Thousands of displaced Venezuelans are sleeping in crowded shelters or outside without access to clean water amid dismal sanitary conditions following the June 24 earthquakes. Aid workers said the aftermath of the quakes — which Venezuelan officials say have killed more than 1,900 people — has become a major medical crisis that, unless quickly controlled, would take more lives in the days and weeks ahead.
“The issue we foresee just around the corner is the infections that patients who have been exposed to the disaster for the longest time might bring,” said Eugenio Cova, the head of the trauma unit at Hospital del Oeste Dr. José Gregorio Hernández in Caracas, the capital.
“We’ve already gone through the period of complex trauma — which will continue to occur — but now it’s complicated by infections."
The United States, which has said it will take control of Venezuela’s oil industry after seizing its former leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January, has scaled up its assistance, with 900 military personnel currently on the ground to support relief and rescue operations as of Wednesday, Steven McLoud, a U.S. Southern Command spokesperson, told The Associated Press. The military has repaired the earthquake-damaged runway at the main Caracas international airport to allow for the arrival of humanitarian assistance and stationed naval assets off the coast to receive airlifted survivors.
An additional 100 people from the U.S. State Department have been sent to aid those efforts, McLoud said.
So far, the Trump administration has offered Venezuela $300 million in assistance channeled through aid groups and the United Nations. But that remains just a fraction of the post-earthquake aid the country needs: Direct material damage from the quakes is estimated at more than $6.7 billion, according to satellite analysis by the U.N. Development Program.
It also remains unclear how involved the U.S. government will get in Venezuela's large-scale reconstruction efforts, which could last years. U.N. agencies estimate that the earthquake amassed 1.2 million tons of debris of destroyed buildings and belongings.
Long before the earthquakes, Venezuela's public hospitals were strained by chronic shortages of water, energy, life-saving medical equipment and highly trained staff.
More than 8 million people have fled the country's economic crisis in recent years, including doctors and nurses. Those who remain are now confronting the overwhelming prospect of treating thousands of grievous injuries from crushed and caved-in concrete structures. The government on Tuesday raised the number of people injured in the quakes to 10,571 — an increase of 5,000 from just the day before.
Hospital del Oeste Dr. José Gregorio Hernández in Caracas lacks screws and plates needed for orthopedic surgery and medicated gauze to prevent infections, said Cova, who conducts surgery on crushed limbs in makeshift operating rooms because possible earthquake damage has made parts of the building inaccessible. According to the government, the earthquakes damaged or otherwise compromised 38 hospitals nationwide.
There's also a nationwide shortage of ambulances, said Jaime Lorenzo, director of United Doctors of Venezuela, a nonprofit network of medical professionals, and most patients are arriving to hospitals in the backs of pickup trucks.
Lorenzo said he expects to see a new wave of patients — those who, rendered suddenly homeless after the earthquakes, have gone all week without essential medication for chronic diseases such as asthma, diabetes and hypertension.
Aid workers also warn that the extensive damage to infrastructure is turning hard-hit communities into petri dishes for disease.
“It’s very hot and there’s a lot of concern about potential vector-borne diseases,” said Veronique Durroux, the U.N. humanitarian agency spokesperson for Latin America and the Caribbean. “Waste management is an issue. Debris management, when you see the scale of devastation, it’s very concerning.”
Even as the window of opportunity narrowed in the search for survivors trapped under the rubble, specialists flown in from more than two dozen countries pressed on Wednesday with rescue missions. Against the odds — the window for survival when trapped under rubble is typically 48 to 72 hours — teams are continuing to find a small number of survivors, including a toddler who had been trapped for six days Tuesday.
Venezuelan officials have counted 1,943 deaths from the earthquakes as of Tuesday, a figure that rises daily. Many more thousands remain missing, adding ambiguity to the temblors' complete toll and leaving families in an agonizing limbo as they wait days by collapsed buildings, hoping for the bodies of their loved ones to surface.
One non-governmental digital database where families can register missing loved ones showed over 40,600 people still unaccounted for as of Wednesday.
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This story has been corrected to show the U.S. Southern Command spokesperson's name is Steven McLoud, not Steven McCloud, and the hospital name is Hospital del Oeste Dr. José Gregorio Hernández, not Hospital del Oeste Dr. José Gregor Hernández.
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Janetsky reported from Mexico City and DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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