Disease risk soars after quakes in Venezuela

A week after Venezuela’s historic twin earthquakes, doctors on Wednesday said the biggest dangers now facing survivors were untreated wounds and infectious diseases.

Thousands of displaced Venezuelans are sleeping in crowded shelters or outside without access to clean water amid dismal sanitary conditions following the June 24 earthquakes. Aid workers said the aftermath has become a major medical crisis that, unless quickly controlled, would take more lives in the days and weeks ahead.

“The issue we foresee just around the corner are the infections that patients who have been exposed to the disaster for the longest time might bring,” said Eugenio Cova, the head of the trauma unit at Hospital del Oeste Dr Jose Gregor Hernandez in Caracas, the Capital.

The hospital has treated scores of severely injured people since the earthquake, despite a shortage of crucial medical equipment. Cova said the public hospital, parts of which are now inaccessible because of possible earthquake damage, lacks screws and plates needed for orthopedic surgery and medicated gauze to prevent infections.

According to the Government, the earthquakes damaged or otherwise compromised 38 hospitals nationwide.

“We’ve already gone through the period of complex trauma - which will continue to occur - but now it’s complicated by infections,” Cova added.