Venezuela remains a country in crisis. Since President Nicolás Maduro’s rise to power in 2013, the country continues to endure a crushing humanitarian nightmare with severe food shortages, malnutrition, limited healthcare supplies, including antibiotics, hyperinflation, and major spikes in infectious diseases, including measles, malaria and tuberculosis, spurred by extreme poverty.
In a recent report, The New York Times exposed the harrowing conditions surrounding surging TB rates, noting that the beleaguered country once boasted the lowest rates of the infection in Latin America. Jacobus de Waard, the director of the tuberculosis laboratory at the Institute of Biomedicine in Caracas, told the newspaper: “Tuberculosis is hitting us hard. We’re losing the fight.” Caracas, the nation’s capitol, has seen a 40 percent spike in incidences of TB since last year. “All these forms of tuberculosis that we forget about are starting to reappear,” de Waard said.
As food supplies dwindle, malnutrition — as well as stress — rises, making citizens more susceptible to illnesses like TB. “Tuberculosis is the shadow of misery,” José Félix Oletta, a former Venezuelan health minister, told the Times. “If there’s a disease that is a marker of poverty, it’s tuberculosis.”
Experts worry that as more families and friends have to huddle together in close living quarters due to economic losses and pressures transmission of the infection will increase. And, as more citizens flee to nearby nations, risk of an epidemic will become more likely.
Doctors told the paper that the country is ill-equipped to handle the TB surge due to limited access to antibiotics, as well as doctors and nurses, many of whom have fled to other countries.
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