“I pray to God that he is still breathing”: the ordeal of those seeking oxygen for coronavirus patients in Venezuela

Videlba Reyes She moves around relentlessly while waiting to recharge the oxygen cylinders of her COVID-19 sick brother-in-law: after several unsuccessful attempts to admit her to one of Caracas’ overflowing hospitals, the family chose to leave him at home and hope for the best.

“I’m waiting to see if they can sell me (the refill of) a bottle and pray to God that when I come home I’m still breathing», He tells the press agency AFP this 44-year-old accountant with a broken voice and a tired face.

He arrived early this Friday at a distributor. Every second counts, your 58-year-old relative has very low blood saturation and has been without oxygen for an hour. Every now and then he sees the cell phone, she is desperate.

Her tragedy is one of many in the line of some thirty families who are waiting like her to refill their bottles.

“We’ve got two, three weeks on it, it’s torture“, Explain.”He deserves six bottles a day“, But “there is the downside that there is not always oxygen“And it is also very costly for the majority of the population of this country which is going through a deep economic crisis.

Filling a large bottle costs $ 30, or 37 minimum wages.

“My patient currently has one hour without oxygen and he cannot be without oxygen because he saturates very little,” he adds.

Venezuela is going through a second wave of COVID-19, linked to two “more virulent and deadly” Brazilian variants, according to authorities in the government of President Nicolás Maduro, which recognizes just over 171,000 cases and 1,720 deaths.

These figures have been questioned by NGOs such as Human Rights Watch who consider that there is a high underreporting.

Maduro has said in recent days that at the first symptom, patients must go to a public hospital for treatment. “They almost died in health centers,” the president said on April 4. “We are available 24 hours a day.”

But finding a place in a hospital is getting harder and harder, says Reyes based on his own experience.

Only on Thursday, he “routed” (moved) his brother-in-law through six hospitals and a private clinic: “We found no space” and “we chose to have him at home, wherever he wants. to be”.

“We need help”

Before entering the dispenser, the bottles are disinfected. This center supplies another headquarters on the outskirts of Caracas with trucks loaded with cylinders.

Ramon lopez, a 59-year-old trader, is familiar with the protocol: Every day, for the past three weeks, she has been coming here to refill the big bottle and two small ones that her 86-year-old mother, who is sick with COVID-19, needs..

“We had a hard time with her, she is already three weeks old but she is still delicate“Explain.” You get money where you don’t have to do what you have to do.

Social networks are inundated with requests for help filling up with oxygen or buying cylinders, which exceed $ 1,500 for the larger ones.

In the Domingo Santaella hospital, a reference in Los Teques, a neighboring city of Caracas, there are beds available and the supply of oxygen guaranteed, according to its director Miguel Tovar.

“They provide us with oxygen daily», He assures the AFP. “We have expanded and will continue to expand capabilities (…) to be prepared for the eventuality“.

With all, Some patients have denounced that when they look for a place in public health centers, they have to bring their own oxygen cylinder..

Jaime Lorenzo, from the NGO Médicos Unidos, explains that oxygen demand in Venezuela has increased three to four times and that home care has also exploded.

Reyes, without stopping to look at the cell phone, waits for one of the workers to download his two cylinders into the car and rush home.

“A person who does not even win to buy a bottle is doomed to die,” laments this woman, suggesting that her situation is not comfortable either. “We need help, we need oxygen, we need the government to help us.”

(By Javier Tovar / Yorman Maldonado – AFP)

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