Poverty The Wall Street Journal reported in March 2019 that poverty was double that of 2014. in May 2018 Several other factors have led to shortages: imports over the two years until the end of 2017 declined by two-thirds; hyperinflation has made food too costly for many Venezuelans; and for those who depend on food boxes supplied by the government, "these do not reach all Venezuelans who need them, provision of boxes is intermittent, and receipt is often linked to political support of the government". With shadowy connections to the government,
The Washington Post says "some have been put in charge of the distribution of government food packages in poor areas—giving them control over hungry neighborhoods." The Associated Press reports that people gather every evening in downtown Caracas in search of food thrown out on a sidewalk; the people are typically unemployed, but are "frequently joined by small business owners, college students and pensioners—people who consider themselves middle class even though their living standards have long ago been pulverized by triple-digit inflation, food shortages and a collapsing currency". One dump reports finding parts of dismembered animals, like "dogs, cats, donkeys, horses and pigeons" and there is evidence that people are eating wildlife such as anteaters, flamingos, vultures and lizards. The
Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN said that less than 5% of Venezuelans were undernourished between 2008 and 2013, but that number had more than doubled, to almost 12% from 2015 and 2017, representing 3.7 million people. A 2016 Venebarometro poll of 1,200 Venezuelans found almost half are no longer able to eat three daily meals; the government blames this on an "economic war" they say is waged by the opposition. Analysts said that two-thirds of Venezuela's population (20 million people) were without water, partially or completely, in the weeks after the blackouts. The head of the infectious disease department at the
University Hospital of Caracas, María Eugenia Landaeta said that, without access to clean water, the chance of people contracting bacterial infections increased, and that doctors had seen during the blackouts "surges in diarrhea,
typhoid fever and
hepatitis A", An UN report estimated in March 2019 that 94% of Venezuelans lived in poverty, Following increased international sanctions throughout 2019, the Maduro government abandoned policies established by Chávez such as price and currency controls, which resulted in the country seeing a temporary rebound from economic decline before
COVID-19 entered Venezuela the following year. As a response to the devaluation of the official
bolívar currency, by 2019 the population increasingly started relying on US dollars for transactions. Maduro described dollarization as an "escape valve" that helps the recovery of the country, the spread of productive forces in the country and the economy. However, Maduro said that the Venezuelan bolívar remained as the national currency. During the Bolivarian Revolution, the government began providing free healthcare, with Cuban medical professionals providing aid. The government's failure to concentrate on healthcare and a reduction in spending on healthcare, along with unchecked government corruption resulted in avoidable deaths due to severe shortages of medical supplies and equipment, and the emigration of medical professionals to other countries. Venezuela's reliance on imported goods and the complicated exchange rates initiated under Chávez led to increasing shortages during the late 2000s and into the 2010s that affected the availability of medicines and medical equipment in the country. The Health Minister changed multiple times during Chávez's presidency. According to a high-ranking official of Venezuela's Health Ministry, the ministers were treated as scapegoats whenever issues with public health arose in Venezuela. By early 2015, only 35% of hospital beds were available and 50% of operating rooms could not function due to the lack of resources. In 2015, the government reported that a third of patients admitted to public hospitals died. The medications of individuals who die are re-distributed through small-scale and local efforts, with the help of the families of the deceased, to try to supply surviving patients. One study of 6,500 households by three of the main universities in Venezuela found that "74% of the population had lost on average nineteen pounds in 2016". It also said that the number of cases of malaria was up by 76%. Shortly after Minister of Health Antonieta Caporale released in 2017 this data, and health statistics showing increases in 2016 infant and maternal mortality and infectious diseases, Maduro fired her and replaced the physician with a pharmacist close to vice-president
Tareck El Aissami, Luis López Chejade. The publications were removed from the Ministry's website, and no further health data has been made available, although the government had produced health bulletins for several decades.
2019 Human Rights Watch/Johns Hopkins report for medicine due to the
shortages in Venezuela In April 2019, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published the results of a joint, year-long research project in a report entitled "Venezuela's humanitarian emergency: Large-scale UN response needed to address health and food crises". Combined with data from the
World Health Organization (WHO), the PAHO with Venezuelan emigrants to Colombia and Brazil, officials from relief and humanitarian organizations, Venezuelan health care professionals, and UN and government officials from Brazil and Colombia. Paul Spiegel, MD, who was the editor and reviewer of the report said, "Venezuela is a middle-income country with a previously strong infrastructure, so just to see this incredible decline ... in such a short period of time is quite astonishing." Venezuela's Foreign Minister
Jorge Arreaza did not respond to a letter asking for Venezuela's "views regarding the extent of the crisis and the policies it was implementing to address it" before the HRW/Johns Hopkins report was published. The Americas director for HRW, José Miguel Vivanco said, "Venezuelan authorities publicly minimise and suppress information about the crisis, and harass and retaliate against those who collect data or speak out about it, while also doing far too little to alleviate it." The increased aid would focus in four areas: the migration crisis, the health care system collapse, water and sanitation, and prisons and detention centers.
The Wall Street Journal said that the acceptance of humanitarian shipments by Maduro was his first acknowledgement that Venezuela is "suffering from an economic collapse", and
The Guardian reported that Maduro's stance has softened in the face of increasing pressure.
Infectious and preventable diseases stated that there could be between 65,000 and 117,000 Venezuelans infected. In August 2015 independent health monitors said that there were more than two million people infected with chikungunya while the government said there were 36,000 cases. further limiting access to these utilities. Shortages of beds and essential medical equipment, such as latex gloves and antibiotics, have severely limited the capabilities of the country's medical infrastructure. In April 2020 the Venezuelan government asked the
Bank of England to sell $US1.02 billion of the Venezuelan gold reserves held by the bank to help the government fund its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was followed on 14 May by a legal claim by the
Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) asking the Bank of England to send the proceeds of the sale of gold to the
United Nations Development Programme. The claim stated that the funds would then be used to buy healthcare equipment, medicine, and food to address the country's "COVID-19 emergency". The
UK Foreign Office had previously agreed to a request from the
Trump administration to block the release of Venezuela's gold. In July 2020, the
UK High Court ruled that the gold could not be released to the BCV because the UK government recognised Juan Guaidó as the "constitutional interim president of Venezuela". However, in October 2020, an appeals court overturned the High Court decision and asked the UK Foreign Office to clarify who it recognised as president of Venezuela.
The Guardian wrote that the position of the UK government was unclear as it "maintains full consular and diplomatic relations with the Venezuela government".
Women, maternal and infant In 2016,
infant mortality increased 30% in one year, to 11,466 deaths of children under the age of one. "Venezuela is the only South American country where infant mortality has returned to levels last seen in the 1990s", according to the HRW/Johns Hopkins report.
Abortion is illegal in Venezuela; the director of a large family planning clinic in Venezuela indicated that more women are arranging for permanent sterilization, and that more are presenting with "complications from clandestine abortions".
Pregnancy and motherhood Due to lack of medical supplies, food and medical care in Venezuelan hospitals, many pregnant women in Venezuela are crossing the border into neighboring countries to give birth. Lack of basic medicine and equipment is causing preventable deaths and maternity is a very high risk for women, especially since there are no blood banks in the event of excessive bleeding. Hospitals frequently have water and electricity outages and only 7% of emergency services are fully operative. Maternal mortality is estimated to have increased by 65% from 2013 to 2016, and unsafe abortions have contributed to 20% of preventable maternal deaths.
Statelessness Cúcuta, a city on the Colombian-Venezuela border, has received 14,000 Venezuelan patients at the Erasmo Meoz University Hospital since 2016 and is expecting to receive even more. The situation has strained the budget of these hospitals, putting Erasmo Meoz 14 million dollars into debt. The number of births of Venezuelan babies attended to in
Boa Vista, Brazil, has increased from 700 in 2014 to 50,000 in 2017. For Colombian citizenship it is required that Colombian citizens be born to at least one Colombian parent or be born to foreign parents who meet residence requirements and are eligible to become citizens. Due to the influx of Venezuelan babies being born in Colombia and the Venezuelan government's inability to issue citizenship, Colombia has introduced a new measure that will give these Colombian-born newborns Colombian citizenship to avoid 'statelessness'. As a result of the crisis, stressors resulting in suicide included economic burden, hunger and loneliness due to the emigration of relatives. In 2016, reporters from
The New York Times visited six psychiatric wards across the Venezuela at the invitation of doctors; all reported shortages of medicine and even food. In the investigation, they reported that El Pampero Hospital had not employed a psychiatrist in two years, and that it only had running water for only a few hours a day. The hospital, the article said, also suffered from shortages of basic personal-care and cleaning supplies, such as soap, shampoo, toothpaste or toilet paper. The nurses declared that without sedatives, they had to restrain patients or lock them in isolation cells to keep them from harming themselves. The reporters also noted that the government had denied that its public hospitals were suffering from shortages, and had refused multiple offers of international medical aid. Despite the threat of violent protests, the economic crisis affected children more than violence. Abel Saraiba, a psychologist with children's rights organization Cecodap said in 2017, "We have children from a very early age who are having to think about how to survive", with half of her young clients requiring treatment because of the crisis. Children are often forced to stand in food lines or beg with their parents, while the games they play with other children revolve around finding food. Friends of the Child Foundation psychologist Ninoska Zambrano said that children are offering sexual services for food. Zambrano said "Families are doing things that not only lead them to break physically, but in general, socially, we are being morally broken". In 2017, suicide increased by 67% among the elderly and 18% among minors; by 2018, reports emerged of a rapidly increasing suicide rate due to the stressors surrounding the crisis.
Medical care and elections Mission Barrio Adentro was a program established by Chávez to bring medical care to poor neighborhoods; it was staffed by Cubans that were sent to Venezuela in exchange for petroleum.
The New York Times interviewed sixteen Cuban medical professionals in 2019 who had worked for
Barrio Adentro prior to the 2018 Venezuelan presidential elections; all sixteen revealed that they were required to participate in voting fraud. Some of the Cubans said that "command centers" for elections were placed near clinics to facilitate "dispatching doctors to pressure residents". In 2005, the Venezuelan Construction Chamber (CVC) estimated that there was a shortage of 1.6 million homes, with only 10,000 of 120,000 promised homes constructed by Chávez's government despite billions of dollars in investments. Poor Venezuelans attempted to construct homes on their own despite structural risks. Up to 2011, only 500,000 homes were constructed during the Chávez administration, with over two-thirds of the new housing developments being built by private companies; his government provided about the same amount of housing as previous administrations. By 2012, a shortage of building materials also disrupted construction, with metal production at a 16-year low. By the end of Chávez's presidency in 2013, the number of Venezuelans in inadequate housing had grown to 3 million. By 2016, residents of government-provided housing, who were usually supporters of the government, began protesting due to the lack of utilities and food. ==Social==