Venezuela's health crisis spreads to neighboring countries

In 2016, the World Health Organization declared triumphantly that the Americas were the first region in the world to eradicate measles. A year later, a measles outbreak erupted in Venezuela.

"And therefore, since June 2017, we have seen nearly 6,500 cases [in Venezuela]Says Robert Linkins of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Linkins is the Head of the Division of Accelerated Disease Control and Vaccine Preventable Disease Surveillance at CDC, and as such, is the lead Donor CDC Officer in the world.

Linkins says that of the 6,500 confirmed cases of measles in Venezuela, at least 76 people have died. And after starting in Venezuela, this epidemic is spreading now throughout Latin America.

"We have more than 10,000 cases in Brazil and 12 deaths, and now we see it in Colombia and Ecuador, Argentina, Chile and Peru," he said.

Venezuela previously had one of the best health systems on the continent. Now, it's the most problematic. The current political and economic crisis has caused major shortages of food and medicine, hyperinflation and millions of refugees leaving the country. Venezuela now has two men who both claim to be the legitimate president.

The downward spiral of the country began in the last years of Hugo Chavez's presidency in the mid-2000s. Despite the world's largest oil reserves, Venezuela's national vaccination campaigns against most diseases began to take hold. disintegrate in 2007.

Measles is very contagious and Linkins of the CDC says to end the epidemics. Health officials must maintain 95% of the population immunized against the virus. Every year that children are not vaccinated in Venezuela, the pool of people that measles could infect could develop. And the country has become fertile ground for the virus.

"It is not a surprise to many of us that Venezuela is about to burst," Linkins said. "It was inevitable that one [measles] case would be introduced because there is measles all over the world ".

In addition to measles, malaria has exploded in Venezuela and fueled epidemics in other parts of the region.

Alfonso Rodriguez-Morales is Professor of Infectious Diseases at the Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira in Colombia. He grew up in Venezuela and studied medicine in Venezuela before emigrating to Colombia eight years ago.

"Venezuela is currently the biggest malaria problem in the region," Rodriguez-Morales said. "Malaria is increasing significantly year after year."

Rodriguez-Morales said that there are very good mosquito control programs in his country. Venezuela officially eradicated malaria in 1961, but says that the disease has slowly returned. Then, in the last two years, it has exploded.

"Last year, 2018 was closed with more than half a million cases of malaria," he said. "This has never been recorded before in the country."

The hundreds of thousands of people who contracted malaria in Venezuela last year and those who contract it now are unlikely to receive treatment. "The national malaria control program is not working well right now, there is no proper diagnosis, and there are no drugs for treatment," he said. declared. "We currently have the ideal scenario for the continuation of the malaria epidemic in the country."

UNHCR, the US Refugee Agency, said more than 3 million Venezuelans have now left the country because of the current crisis. Most of them ended up in Colombia, Brazil and other parts of South America. And when they do, some are carriers of malaria or other diseases.

In the first eight months of 2018, Peruvian officials said 550,000 Venezuelans have arrived in their country. According to the Peruvian Ministry of Health, 720 of them were immediately integrated into the public HIV treatment program. This put a strain on Peru's HIV drug distribution system, particularly in the capital, Lima. According to patients, the Venezuelan public health system is running out of life-saving anti-AIDS drugs several months ago.

But it's not just people in need of health care who are fleeing Venezuela. The country is also losing health professionals.

In December, when Chile gave its national exam to certify that doctors are working in its public health system, just over 5,000 candidates sat down to take the exam. Nearly half of them, 2,300, were Venezuelan doctors.

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