The only thing that can be heard in the room is the beeping of the machines, which mark every second that patients like John Villamizar They spend connected to a dialysis machine in a public center in Caracas, after a long search for a place.
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A dialysis session is around 1,000 dollars in Venezuela / Cuartoscuro
Hypertensive and diabetic, a blood pressure surge sent him to a hospital emergency room, where he spent more than 20 days hospitalized. Doctors informed relatives that his kidneys were working at 10%.
This is dramatic,” says Juan, 65. “Do you know how many people are (waiting)? They do not reach these centers. This is not enough.”
His son got him a place in the dialysis center Hugo Chavez, in Caracas, after knocking on doors in dozens of hospitals. In the University Clinic, in a deep budget crisis, the nephrology service is intended for hospitalized patients, like Juan at the time.
When he was discharged, the ordeal began.
One… two… three hospitals. Same answer: there is no place. In one, Edwin’s son remembers, the nurse told him: “sign up on the list to see if a patient dies or dies. It’s the option you have.” “We ran away”reports.
He searched for weeks until he found a place.
“Big Crash”
A private center is impossible for this family in Venezuela, where three out of four people live in extreme poverty. A dialysis session is around 1,000 dollars.
The care system for kidney patients “collapsed” since 2015, according to a report by the Coalition of Organizations for the Right to Health and Life (Codevida).
The great collapse of the system has been a consequence of the institutional dismantling and essential health services,” says this NGO.
Some 15,000 Venezuelans were treated in 2016 under the Social Security dialysis program. “Many of these people have died,” Codevida director Francisco Valencia told AFP. “Today (…) it does not reach 6,000 patients.”
There are no official figures. Charles Rotondaro, former health minister accused of corruptiona dissident from Chavismo, has said that 5,000 kidney patients died between 2017 and 2019.
In the Concepción Palacios maternity hospital, one of the most important in Caracas, there is barely a dialysis machine, damaged until recently. It was arranged by the family of a patient.
The collapse, highlights Valencia, occurred before the international sanctions that unsuccessfully sought the fall of the president Nicholas Maduroand covers not only dialysis, but also the transplant service, practically stopped.
The government, which attributes the crisis to sanctions, announced last week the opening of a dialysis unit and a transplant center. Other services were reopened after years inoperative.
lack of doctors
Juan enters the dialysis room alone. Companions are not allowed. His children, who wear it three times a week, they leave after putting a mat, a pillow and a blanket on the chair recliner in which he spends about three hours per session.
About 15 people surround him, but there is no encouragement to talk. People go into a kind of lethargy as machines extract fluid retained in their bodies.
A patient of Hugo Chavez who has just finished his session in the morning shift denounces that there is often a lack of water, a symptom of the chronic crisis of public services in this country.
That day, fortunately, everything went well. A cistern supplied one of the four 10,000-liter tanks installed outside the house that houses the center.
Dialysis units must meet a minimum of requirements and none of them today in Venezuela meets it,” laments Valencia.
The lack of personnel is added, since many doctors and specialist nurses emigrated, fleeing from poor salaries. “We have cases where even family members or patients have to help connect or disconnect a patient,” says Valencia.
Juan has a slight fever. Possibly the catheter he has in his chest got infected. His relatives want to put it on his arm, but that’s worth 120 dollars that they don’t have.
His granddaughter welcomes him with a kiss and a cup of coffee.
I pray to God that this is temporary,” says this grandfather, tired. His next dialysis will be in two days.
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