**** BEYOND HIS PROPAGANDA CHAVEZ IS NOT DOING MUCH FOR THE HEALTH OF THE POOR. MOSTLY GARBAGE.
A 2007 report on the situation of health care in Venezuela: “Informe sobre el derecho a la salud en Venezuela, 2007”, put together by a group of ten organizations which include, among others, the Universidad Simon Bolivar, Accion Solidaria (ACSOL), Convite A.C., Nuevo Amanecer, CESAP, and the Coalition of NGO’s for the Right to Health shows convincingly that the health sector of Venezuela, under the regime of Hugo Chavez, is far from the success that mercenaries and paid propagandists of the Chavez regime would like us to believe.
The report (http://www.derechos.org.ve/Informe_derecho_Salud_2007_.pdf) contains some observations that serve to put the real Venezuelan health situation in a true perspective. Some of its findings include:
Since 1999 onwards the expenditure for health in Venezuela “is one of the lowest in the world”, at $122 per person for the year 2006. According to government officers this expenditure is totally insufficient to cover the objectives of universality in the health public system. In other words, the population remains largely unattended. Public investment in health should be between 7-10 percent of the GDP but in Venezuela is around 3 percent of the GDP. Three fourths of the investment in health in the country is made by the private sector.
What exists now in Venezuela is a government’s health system more than a public health system. It is strongly centralized and proposes the creation of a National Institute of Medical Services that would control all of the Medical Centers of a public nature. This would destroy all the advances made by the decentralization process that took place in Venezuela during the 1990’s.
There is no Organic Law for the health sector. A project has been pending in the National Assembly for several years that would replace the currently existing health service structure by one that models the Barrio Adentro structure.
The Barrio Adentro Mission or Program currently has several problems: there is a withdrawal of Cuban doctors; health centers are being closed down, possibly because the Cuban doctors are retuning home. As doctors are becoming scarcer the number of individual centers is declining or become less active since the doctors have to rotate in order to attend to them. Work hours are not being followed and home visits have stopped. The provision of medical materials, cleaning products and medicines has become irregular. As a result, patients are asked to bring their own materials and/or medicines.
Due to lack of trained nurses the doctors in Barrio Adentro have had to rely on volunteers to help them. Volunteers do not last long due to the intense routine and doctors have little help. The centers are “managed” by a community committee that often does not work well.
The health infrastructure in Venezuela is still insufficient to provide for universal healthcare. There are significant deficits of infrastructure and of services. 54 percent of the personnel interviewed by the authors of the report say that the capacity of their health center is insufficient to attend the demand. Public hospitals have to turn back about 30 percent of the patients due to lack of facilities and services for them.
IN 2004 the deficit of ambulatory health centers was of some 7,000.
The deficit of hospital beds is significant. The WHO establishes a standard of 40 beds per 10,000 people and Venezuela has 17 beds per 10,000 people. While the percentage of intensive therapy beds should be equal to 5-8 percent of the total in Venezuela they amount to less than one percent of the total. This only covers 25 percent of the total demand. What this means is that access to these beds is only possible for those who have a chance to recover.
Hospitals have one nurse for every 40 patients while the standard required by the World Health Organization is one nurse for every eight patients.
Since public hospitals do not receive enough financial resources from the government they request patients to pay for medicines, services or the like. The hospitals that do this include those of the Social Security system (Seguro Social). The gratuity of medical attention in public hospitals is largely mythical. This represents a clear violation of the constitution that stipulates that medical service will be free.
The health sector in Venezuela is not regulated at present by any law and does not comply with the international standards on organizational structure.
The findings in this report coincide with the observations presented by Francisco Rodriguez in his work on “The Empty Revolution”. Foreign Affairs, May-April 2008, and contradict the rosy picture presented by Chavez government bureaucrats and lobbyists for Chavez in other countries. .
A 2007 report on the situation of health care in Venezuela: “Informe sobre el derecho a la salud en Venezuela, 2007”, put together by a group of ten organizations which include, among others, the Universidad Simon Bolivar, Accion Solidaria (ACSOL), Convite A.C., Nuevo Amanecer, CESAP, and the Coalition of NGO’s for the Right to Health shows convincingly that the health sector of Venezuela, under the regime of Hugo Chavez, is far from the success that mercenaries and paid propagandists of the Chavez regime would like us to believe.
The report (http://www.derechos.org.ve/Informe_derecho_Salud_2007_.pdf) contains some observations that serve to put the real Venezuelan health situation in a true perspective. Some of its findings include:
Since 1999 onwards the expenditure for health in Venezuela “is one of the lowest in the world”, at $122 per person for the year 2006. According to government officers this expenditure is totally insufficient to cover the objectives of universality in the health public system. In other words, the population remains largely unattended. Public investment in health should be between 7-10 percent of the GDP but in Venezuela is around 3 percent of the GDP. Three fourths of the investment in health in the country is made by the private sector.
What exists now in Venezuela is a government’s health system more than a public health system. It is strongly centralized and proposes the creation of a National Institute of Medical Services that would control all of the Medical Centers of a public nature. This would destroy all the advances made by the decentralization process that took place in Venezuela during the 1990’s.
There is no Organic Law for the health sector. A project has been pending in the National Assembly for several years that would replace the currently existing health service structure by one that models the Barrio Adentro structure.
The Barrio Adentro Mission or Program currently has several problems: there is a withdrawal of Cuban doctors; health centers are being closed down, possibly because the Cuban doctors are retuning home. As doctors are becoming scarcer the number of individual centers is declining or become less active since the doctors have to rotate in order to attend to them. Work hours are not being followed and home visits have stopped. The provision of medical materials, cleaning products and medicines has become irregular. As a result, patients are asked to bring their own materials and/or medicines.
Due to lack of trained nurses the doctors in Barrio Adentro have had to rely on volunteers to help them. Volunteers do not last long due to the intense routine and doctors have little help. The centers are “managed” by a community committee that often does not work well.
The health infrastructure in Venezuela is still insufficient to provide for universal healthcare. There are significant deficits of infrastructure and of services. 54 percent of the personnel interviewed by the authors of the report say that the capacity of their health center is insufficient to attend the demand. Public hospitals have to turn back about 30 percent of the patients due to lack of facilities and services for them.
IN 2004 the deficit of ambulatory health centers was of some 7,000.
The deficit of hospital beds is significant. The WHO establishes a standard of 40 beds per 10,000 people and Venezuela has 17 beds per 10,000 people. While the percentage of intensive therapy beds should be equal to 5-8 percent of the total in Venezuela they amount to less than one percent of the total. This only covers 25 percent of the total demand. What this means is that access to these beds is only possible for those who have a chance to recover.
Hospitals have one nurse for every 40 patients while the standard required by the World Health Organization is one nurse for every eight patients.
Since public hospitals do not receive enough financial resources from the government they request patients to pay for medicines, services or the like. The hospitals that do this include those of the Social Security system (Seguro Social). The gratuity of medical attention in public hospitals is largely mythical. This represents a clear violation of the constitution that stipulates that medical service will be free.
The health sector in Venezuela is not regulated at present by any law and does not comply with the international standards on organizational structure.
The findings in this report coincide with the observations presented by Francisco Rodriguez in his work on “The Empty Revolution”. Foreign Affairs, May-April 2008, and contradict the rosy picture presented by Chavez government bureaucrats and lobbyists for Chavez in other countries. .
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