The residents of Maracaibo in Venezuela get to work anyway they can as spare part shortages have led to a decreased public transport. Photo / Getty
The residents of Maracaibo in Venezuela get to work anyway they can as spare part shortages have led to a decreased public transport. Photo / Getty
Nearly 30 years after declaring Polio eradicated in Venezuela, the first case of the disease has been reported in the country as it reels from an economic crash crippling its healthcare system.
The case in the eastern state of Delta Amacuro was reported as basic vaccine coverage continued tofall amid the worsening political and economic crisis.
The news comes as the country faces an increase in other diseases, some also formerly eradicated, such as diphtheria, tuberculosis, measles, and malaria.
Polio, or poliomyelitis, can be a crippling childhood disease but is preventable through immunisation.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro gestures during a ceremony to recognise him as the winner of the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela in May. Photo / AP
In Delta Amacuro, where the case was discovered, vaccine coverage only reached 67 per cent, according to a statement from a local watchdog group.
"The government is not approving the money for the vaccines," said MP Manuela Bolivar, a member of the country's opposition-controlled National Assembly who is studying the surge of infectious diseases.
"This situation is unfortunate but we saw it coming, because we've been denouncing for years that there are not enough vaccines," she said.
While the government launched a vaccination campaign on April 6 against 14 disease including tuberculosis and measles, critics say not enough vaccines are arriving to cover the demand.
As the country's crisis has deepened, the government has struggled to afford imports of basic foods, medicines, and vaccines.
President Nicolas Maduro has blamed the deteriorating situation on an "economic war" led by business interests and the United States to topple his socialist government, while denying that a humanitarian crisis exists.
According to the country's Vice-minister for Health Indhriana Parada the country "guarantees essential medicines through a system of distribution to the most vulnerable sectors," a statement she made in a presentation to the World Health Organisation on May 23.
But other medical organisations such as CodeVida, which monitors the shortages of medicines, affirm that 90 per cent of medicines and essential vaccines have disappeared from pharmacy shelves. Last week an image of Elizabeth Salazar, 63, raising her shirt to reveal her rotting breast spread rapidly on local social networks.
"I still haven't been able to receive the first dose of chemotherapy because it's not available in the Venezuelan Social Security Institute," Salazar told Amnesty International.
A mother and her children search rubbish skips for food while the government of Nicolás Maduro denies that there is a humanitarian crisis in the country. Photo / Getty
Venezuela has also accounted for 85 per cent of cases of measles reported across Latin America and the Caribbean over the past year, according to the Pan-American Health Organization.
Of the 11 countries that reported cases, Venezuela had the overwhelming majority of cases, but also 35 deaths since mi-2017, according to the international organisation. Cases of measles have been reported in 17 out of 23 of the country's states and in the capital Caracas.
Monitoring the collapsing public health system has been complicated by a lack of access to public health data. Local health authorities took more than a month to notify the PAHO that they had identified a case of polio, although international health regulations require them to do so within 24 hours.
"I think this is a state policy, to not assume the crisis, because it would be assuming the failure of the health system created by Hugo Chavez," Ms Bolivar said.
Authorities at the health ministry did not respond to requests for comment Sunday.
Symptoms of the polio virus can include fever, sore throat, vomiting, and muscle weakness or stiffness and is spread by eating food or water contaminated with infected fecal matter. While most fully recover, in rare cases the disease can cause paralysis and death.
"The virus especially affects people in conditions of malnutrition and unvaccinated, as this case," said Doctor Jose Felix Oletta, a former Minister of Health.
According to the PAHO, the case of polio was discovered among an isolated and impoverished indigenous group.
Delta Amacuro, the state where the case of polio was discovered, is home to the Warao communities, an indigenous group that lives in riverside huts on Venezuela's Orinoco Delta. The Warao have already been wracked by an HIV epidemic; a 2013 study found that 10 per cent of the community has been infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
