Decades of neglect for the country’s healthcare system have left medics improvising as they treat victims of Wednesday’s earthquake devastation, a Venezuelan doctor warned.
“The Venezuelan healthcare system has declined progressively,” Dr. Huníades Urbina-Medina, a pediatrician and former president of Venezuela’s National Medicine Academy, told CNN.
The doctor and his colleagues have been alerting officials about this “decay” since the 1998 electoral victory of Hugo Chávez, he said.
Urbina-Medina said the country falls far below the levels of investment recommended by the World Health Organization. “We lack the…