Field hospitals fill gap as public system strains for quake survivors
On a baseball field in La Guaira, a 54-bed field hospital run by Samaritan’s Purse, a North Carolina-based Christian relief group, is treating patients with X-ray machines and lab equipment that the nearby Dr. José María Vargas Hospital had long lacked. More than 80 American doctors, technicians and water sanitation engineers are staffing the facility, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“We haven’t even been promoting this. But people are just walking down the street and then will come in because they see it’s open,” Thomas Ovington, who leads operations for the facility, told the Journal. “There’s so much loss, tragedy and darkness. People are just looking for hope.”
The field hospital is one of several new medical installations that have sprung up since the June 24 earthquakes, which devastated coastal communities and killed at least 4,118 people, injured 17,000 and left 30,000 missing, the Journal reported. The Brazilian Navy has opened a field hospital nearby. Venezuelan medical students, doctors and veterinarians are offering primary care out of a McDonald’s that was among the few buildings left intact after the quakes.
“Certainly, us being here is filling a need that ideally should be met by the regular hospitals,” Dr. Juan Ramos, a 30-year-old surgeon who traveled from Valencia to volunteer, told the Journal.
The crisis has exposed the deep failures of Venezuela’s public-health system, which for years operated without basic medication, reliable power or disinfectants, the Journal reported. “The precariousness of our public-health system is terrible,” Mario Patiño, dean of the faculty of medicine at Venezuela’s Central University, told the Journal. “The state’s capacity to respond is very limited. There are a lot of volunteers essentially assuming the functions of the state.”
For many Venezuelans, the international clinics have become a preferred alternative to state hospitals. Julio Morales, a 37-year-old bus driver, brought his family to a refugee camp on a golf course where Mexican and Venezuelan army medics were giving free services. “It’s way better here than going to the state hospital. The attention there is awful,” he told the Journal. He received acupuncture treatment for high blood pressure and care for an infected finger. “I’m really relaxed. I was falling asleep,” Morales said.
Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has been visiting field hospitals and thanking the more than 30 foreign nations that have sent health aid, including the U.S., El Salvador and Israel — countries that the Journal noted Venezuela’s government had considered sworn enemies at the start of the year.
But some patients still face the shortcomings of the government system. Johan Izaguirre, a 27-year-old building maintenance worker, spent days at the Domingo Luciani government hospital in Caracas waiting for news on his mother, who was pulled alive from a collapsed hotel. The hospital could not process her blood and urine samples, so he had to take them to a private lab, each test costing about $25 — a quarter of his monthly salary. “We lost everything,” he told the Journal. “By the grace of god, we’ll be able to make it through this.”
There were signs that foreign medical supplies were making a difference. Jose Mendoza, a 63-year-old school janitor, had been waiting for expensive medications for head and abdomen injuries from a car accident before the earthquake. Days after foreign supplies arrived, hospital workers told his daughter Jackie that the treatment would be provided free. “They told us we really lucked out,” she said. “This would have cost $4,000.”
Relief workers are also concerned about water contamination and disease in refugee camps. Raibelis Rodríguez, a beach vendor and mother of four, is among some 4,000 refugees from the coast living in tents in Caracas’s Park of the West. She said overflowing bathrooms were so unsanitary that she used her own money to buy bleach. “The hygiene situation is a challenge because people just do not cooperate,” she said.
Samaritan’s Purse plans to eventually transition the field hospital to Venezuelan doctors, and the facility will remain in the country as a charitable donation, Ovington said. The permanence of the health facilities is crucial because the timeline for rebuilding coastal communities remains unclear.