His image has become a symbol of hunger in Venezuela; a nurse came to her aid

CARACAS- When the picture of the Venezuelan girl started circulating last week, the reaction was almost instantaneous. She is 2 years old, but malnutrition and lack of medical treatment have exhausted her body until she is in a state in which she is practically a baby. He spends the day in bed, lying in the precarious hut of his family.

Her name is Anailín Nava, and when readers saw her photographed in an article about the economic collapse of Venezuela in the New York Times, many had the same thrust: it might be difficult to help her country out of a prolonged humanitarian crisis, but surely. something could be done for that particular girl.

On Sunday, help began to arrive.

The shortage of gasoline affected much of Venezuela, but Fabiola Molero, a nurse from the Caritas Catholic relief group, packed a scale and enough milk, food and nutritional supplements for two weeks in a suitcase and Hitchhiked to Maracaibo. west, to the island of Toas, where Anailín lives.

"I worked in a hospital and stopped because I could not handle the death of children in my arms because of lack of supplies," said Molero.

When he left on Sunday, his goal was to check Anailín 's state of health and to know how were the other children in this community.

The state of Zulia, which belongs to the island of Toas, has particularly suffered from the economic collapse of the country. The island was virtually isolated from the rest of the country after the breakdown of public transport boats for lack of spare parts. Government-subsidized food parcels arrive every five months, but it only takes a week to consume them, according to Anailín's mother, Maibeli Nava, and her neighbors.

Molero said that Anailín's case was one of the worst he's seen in twenty years of working in the region. The family was often unable to feed it more than once a day and sometimes it only had rice or cornmeal. The case of severe malnutrition of the girl was aggravated by a neurological disease of genetic origin that causes convulsions, muscle problems and digestive complications, said the nurse.

Anailín, who weighs half of what she should be, is too weak to travel, according to the nurse. But she can receive treatment at home until she recovers enough for a neurologist to follow the path, he added.

"My baby was down and she had a fever, it was very serious," said Maibeli Nava, 25. "I did not even give my hand when I tried to play with it, I thought my daughter was going to die."

The arrival of the nurse and the food had an immediate impact, said Nava. "At this moment he is happy".

Molero said that his arrival had prompted the neighbors to line up outside the Nava house, in one of the Toas fishing villages, to ask for help.

"We are thinking here that the world is going to end, there is a lot of crisis and my neighbors are dying because of lack of medicine," Nava said.

The economic crisis has left the island without medical supplies, despite the fact that it has two hospitals and three public first aid posts. Toads were once a tourist destination, but the deterioration of the country's economy and infrastructure has plunged it into power outages and frequent and prolonged communications.

"I'm worried because there are a lot of pregnant women and the hospital is not working," said Molero.

Of the 26 children evaluated by Molero, 10 were malnourished. Almost all had blisters and abscesses on the skin because of the poor quality of the water, said the nurse. The desalination plant of the island has not worked for years.

"The condition of our children is getting worse by the day," said Molero, 43.

He added that the main threat to children's health was the shortage of dairy products from the interior of the country. Without milk, the most vulnerable families turn to banana powder to make porridge, Molero said.

And the shortage of gasoline makes it difficult to send relief, said the nurse.

"We work with the nails because we have very few resources," he said.

Anatoly Kurmanaev and Nataly Angulo were reported in Maracaibo. Johandry Montiel collaborated on this report from Machiques.

Copyright 2019 New York Times News Service