Guarenas, Venezuela - June 19, 2024

Storyline:
Venezuela's public health system is grappling with critical shortages of medical supplies, with experts saying ongoing U.S. sanctions have limited the country's ability to import essential supplies.

A public hospital in Guarenas, a small town about 35 kilometers east of the capital Caracas, exemplifies the challenges faced by Venezuela's healthcare system. While the facility serves a large patient population, aging equipment and frequent breakdowns have resulted in significant delays in diagnosis and treatment.

Five years ago, plans were made to upgrade the hospital's liquid oxygen storage with larger tanks. However, due to sanctions, acquiring such equipment from the international market has become difficult, forcing the hospital to continue using its aging system.

Heavy reliance on imported medical supplies, coupled with the ongoing impact of U.S. sanctions and asset freezing, has created critical shortages of medications, reagents, and consumables in the country's public hospitals. Vaccines of all kinds, especially the influenza vaccine, which is in great demand, are hard to come by.

The dialysis room at the hospital is a lifeline for many patients in the region. It is currently equipped with some 20 dialysis machines, all of which were purchased from Switzerland with great difficulty two years ago.

Now as the dialysis center is receiving more and more patients every day, with many coming from afar or being transferred from other hospitals, medical workers have to work extra hours to meet the demand, given that buying more dialysis machines from abroad now is almost impossible.

Despite U.S. claims that sanctions exempt medical and humanitarian supplies, the resulting shortages of medicine and medical equipment significantly impact ordinary Venezuelans and their families.

Shotlist:
Guarenas, Venezuela - June 19, 2024:
1. Traffic;
2. People in hospital yard;
3. Various of people waiting in hospital hallway;
4. Various of facilities in hospital;
5. Various of doctor writing prescription, talking to patient;
6. Various of medical workers attending patients in dialysis room, dialysis machine working;
8. Man pushing elderly patient on wheelchair;
Caracas, Venezuela - June 19, 2024
9. Various of cityscape, traffic;
10. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Herick Goicoechea, director, Economic Development Department of the Caracas Mayor's Office:
"There is no doubt that the health sector is the most affected (by the sanctions). This not only affects patients, but also casts a psychological shadow over their entire families, because medicines are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain.";
11. Cityscape.

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