Venezuela: Life without water puts the country on the brink of epidemics of cholera, diarrhea and typhoid – 03/04/2019

For a week longer than 4 million inhabitants of Caracas They mbaded to look for unsafe water in the springs and streams of Avila Hill or in the sewer or the sewers of the Guaire River to alleviate the thirst for power failure during the drying of the metropolitan aqueduct.

The social impact of the shortage of drinking water it's worse than lightsay engineers and doctors because it can trigger a health crisis of such magnitude with epidemics such as cholera, diarrhea and typhoid, among other diseases, contaminated and untreated water

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Ashley Pérez, an unemployed 26-year-old living in Caracas, does not part with her 20 plastic bottles. She is waiting to fill them with water in an underground reservoir of Boyacá Avenue, better known as Cota Mil, which surrounds Avila Hill north of Caracas.

"It's terrible, worse and worse, this country is disgusting, it's useless."

At his side, a firefighter official warns Clarin that Nicolás Maduro's government is forbidden to declare itself to the press. The water jet comes out yellowish from the uniformed pumping hose but "that's all we have," says Ashley and they also give it to us "for free".

Ashley has no qualms about talking to Clarin. It represents the community of La Bombilla de Petare, the most populous poor neighborhood of Venezuela and Latin America, where about 800,000 people live. "We have not had water for a week and we can not take any more."

The dams and reservoirs that feed Caracas with water present a high level of contamination and risk due to the lack of maintenance during these 20 years of Chavismo

Your truck partner who will carry the 20 bottles or pipotes and thermos of 15 liters in the district La Bombilla declares without fear of reprisals: "It is terrible, worse and worse, this country is disgusting, it is useless".

At this point of the Cota Mil curvilinear road, there were about 60 cars to fetch water from the Avila springs and the last one had been waiting for two hours to fill up. four bottles of 10 liters each.

Two kilometers to the east, there is a water station to fill 10,000 liter tanker trucks but it is controlled by the Bolivarian National Guard and the militia of the People's Guard and there is no access for the general public.

Water is paid in dollars

The Truckers take advantage of scarcitythey charge $ 60, $ 120, $ 150 and $ 200 to bring the tanker to people's homes based on their social status. "There is let a collaboration or part of the army to have access to the public water dispenser ", explains José.It asked anonymity, without giving the badurance of the drinkability of his water .

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The health crisis

For the engineer José María De Viana, former president of the Hidrocapital, owned by the state, The water shortage is more serious than electricity, whose power outages have collapsed the motors of the water pumping system in the city.

This is not solved with tanker trucks or tobit (buckets) water or distributing large bottles, says De Viana. "Palliative solutions do not work. You have to put water back in the pipes"From the aqueduct.

Caracas is built on 2,000 kilometers of pipes Where do they live rodents and insects insects), which come to the surface to feed and pollute the environment, but which also need human excrement. 100 liters per dwelling and if there is no water, the sanitary element becomes a pollution center.

"It's a public health problem and you have to take it very seriously. The situation ends up creating a whole range of humanitarian emergency problems of considerable dimensions, because they affect millions of people, "said engineer De Viana, stressing the urgent need to restore water service in the city and to end the absolute drought.

The former Minister of Health, Rafael Orihuela, talks with Clarin that, although they restore the service, dams and reservoirs that fuel Caracas present a high level of contamination and risk of lack of maintenance during these 20 years of chavismo.

Dr. Orihuela recommends the need for clean the tanks before pumping water to the city to reduce risks. He said that the water of Caracas presents a high level of bacteriological contamination to take into account in order to avoid the health crisis which could lead to epidemiological risks such as cholera, leptospirosis, typhoid fever, diarrhea, hepatitis, dysenteryand stop counting.

In the sewers of the Guaire River where the sewer of the city drains many poor young people they are filled with rotten water and they bathe in search of thrown jewels. In this crisis fulfilled the prophecy of Hugo Chávez who promised that in Guaire we were bathing. He spent $ 300 million on this project, but the Guaire was never cleaned and the money stolen.

Orihuela, former director of tropical medicine at the Central University of Venezuela, says that the black waters of Guaire are rotten and that even if young people say the opposite and boil the liquid, the risk of contracting diseases is too high.

Caracas, special

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