Cancer,
transplant patients protest over Venezuela's medicine
shortages
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[August 28, 2015]
By Alexandra Ulmer
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelans with
chronic medical conditions such as breast cancer, hemophilia and
transplants protested in Caracas on Thursday, the latest demonstration
to demand urgent medicines in a country beset with shortages.
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Around 13,000 people with chronic issues are at risk of severe harm
if they do not find chemotherapy or medicines, including those that
prevent organ transplants being rejected, according to organizer
CodeVida, a non-profit umbrella health group.
A combination of currency controls, slumping domestic production and
cross-border smuggling have caused acute shortages of medical
supplies in socialist-led Venezuela. With an estimated seven in 10
drugs currently unavailable, rights groups are warning the situation
is increasingly untenable.
"The word 'wait' doesn't exist for transplant patients. The
medicines are daily. If we don't have them, we collapse," said
Alfredo Quintero, 52, who has a transplanted kidney but has
medicines to last only until Sept. 6.
"What do they want us to be, a statistic?" he said alongside a few
dozen protesters outside a social security pharmaceutical branch
meant to supply free medicines.
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Demonstrators brandished posters reading "S.O.S. - Venezuelan health
is dying." Earlier this month, children suffering from cancer also
protested in front of a Caracas hospital over intermittent supply of
chemotherapy medicines.
"In the last few months the supply of medicines for people with
chronic health issues has worsened. Without these medicines we could
see irreversible harm," said CodeVida director Francisco Valencia.
"We're receiving calls from across the country and we don't know
what to say because we don't have medicine."
MISSING MEDICINES
President Nicolas Maduro has framed shortages as part of an
"economic war" led by businessmen he accuses of hoarding and
smuggling goods.
The government did not reply to requests for comment but Venezuela's
Social Security Institute said in a tweet to Reuters later on
Thursday that to date this year its high-cost program "has invested
169 million bolivars ($27 million) at strongest exchange rate;
$243,000 at black market rate) in treatment for transplant patients.
We guarantee treatment for these catastrophic illnesses."
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Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, harnessed an oil boom to build
free clinics in the slums and health issues such as maternal
mortality improved.
But many health statistics have not been published since shortages
worsened. Hospitals are overloaded, doctors have left the public
sector or the country, and equipment including thermometers and
catheters are scarce.
Around 230 breast cancer patients are unable to undergo surgery due
to lack of blood, said Luisa Rodriguez, the president of breast
cancer group FUNCAMAMA.
"These women are going to see their tumor double in 100 days.
There's a risk of death or treatment being extended unnecessarily,"
said Rodriguez, waving a sign listing a dozen missing medicines.
(Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and
Frances Kerry)
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