Doctors denounce “anarchy” in Venezuela’s vaccination plan

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The director of the NGO Médicos Unidos de Venezuela (MUV), Jorge Lorenzo, denounced this Monday that there is “anarchy” in the scheduling of the vaccination against Covid-19 in the country.

“When you do not plan, do not organize yourself, or do not ask for the help of all those who can help you, you make the mistake of the great bad planning and anarchy that we are observing,” said Lorenzo in a press conference together with other representatives of health workers.

In his opinion, “the big problem” observed in the massive vaccination centers “is clearly” a lack of organization.

At the end of May, the Venezuelan government started a mass vaccination plan against Covid-19 and installed different vaccination points all over the country to start the immunization of the population.

According to some of the conference attendees, the vaccination centers have long lines where people can wait for more than ten hours.

So far, Venezuela has received 3.23 million vaccines, between the Russian Sputnik V and the Chinese VeroCell, from Sinopharm laboratories.

However, in Lorenzo’s opinion, it is not possible to speak of a national vaccination plan being in place, but rather “a national activity”, since there has not been an agreement between all the people who “form part of what should be the action of taking the vaccine to all citizens”.

“That would mean an agreement where there is no distinction of race, gender, or political bias,” assured the physician, who specializes in public health, who considers that these requirements are not met.

He also claimed that to start a vaccination plan, it is necessary “to be sure of the provision of vaccines”, something that he considers is not happening.

Finally, Lorenzo maintained that, due to the lack of organization in the vaccination points, “the most certain thing is that we will have very high contagions”, since “there is no social distancing” and protective equipment is not being used adequately.

“SLAVES OF THE 21ST CENTURY”.

For her part, the president of the College of Nurses of Caracas, Ana Rosario Contreras, denounced that, at the moment, they are “a sort of 21st-century slaves”, since their salaries are low and do not cover basic needs.

This, she explained, has led them to “seek outlets in other occupations”, to get around “the salary that the failed State”, which she considers Venezuela to be today, “has denied them”.

In addition, he assured that they see “patients dying because there is no oxygen” in the hospitals, which today makes it “a tragedy to get sick in Venezuela”.

Faced with this situation, Contreras claimed that “it is an emergency” to organize a vaccination plan with experts.

“We have to sit at a table, we have to look for a solution to the tragedy that is affecting the Venezuelan people”, he stressed.

For her part, the president of the Sindicato Único Nacional de Empleados Públicos, Profesionales, Técnicos y Administrativos del Ministerio de Salud (Government Health Care Workers Union), Zenaida Figuera, joined the denunciations of the working conditions in the sector.

According to her, the government has approved a transportation bonus for them for 23 million bolivars per month (about US$7.30), while those who, as in her case, live in Guatire, a populous dormitory city of Caracas, spend about 63 million bolivars (about US$20) to go to work.

In addition, a “food bonus” was also approved for 23 million bolivars per month, which, in his opinion, “means absolutely nothing because the basic food basket is indexed in dollars”.