Few parts of Venezuela's healthcare system have collapsed as severely as its maternity wards. Doctors are fleeing. Basic supplies are gone.
To understand the scope of the crisis, we spent weeks with pregnant women trying to navigate a shattered system.
nyti.ms/3bdfCd7
To understand the scope of the crisis, we spent weeks with pregnant women trying to navigate a shattered system.
nyti.ms/3bdfCd7
.@julieturkewitz, @IsayenHG, @surdaneta and photographer @MeridithKohut followed pregnant women to 6 hospitals in Venezuela, and one across the border to Colombia, as they sought to deliver.
The lack of basics like vital sign monitors and antibiotics in the wards is, as @IsayenHG writes, "a constant."
Being sent from hospital to hospital has become a defining, terrifying feature of childbirth in Venezuela. It's called the ruleta — roulette.
Being sent from hospital to hospital has become a defining, terrifying feature of childbirth in Venezuela. It's called the ruleta — roulette.
Milagros Vásquez, 20, took buses from her village to Caracas when she realized her baby was coming. She spent 2 days pleading with hospitals to take her in. One didn't have sterile tools. Another didn't have an incubator. She walked away from the third hospital crying. 
At the fifth hospital Milagros visited after her water broke, her mother pounded on the door, begging for help.
Clinging to her mother's waist, sobbing and terrified, Milagros refused to leave. Only after she fainted did the hospital let her in. 48 hours after her labor pains began, she gave birth to her baby.
Milagros’s baby Cristal was born premature and weighed just 3.3 pounds. She did not have an incubator, and did not survive past morning.
The scope of this crisis is unknown. The most recent data came in 2016, when maternal deaths shot up 65% and infant mortality rose 30% in a single year.
The minister who published the numbers was fired. New statistics have been a state secret ever since.
nyti.ms/3bdfCd7
The minister who published the numbers was fired. New statistics have been a state secret ever since.
nyti.ms/3bdfCd7
Leer en español
nyti.ms/2Xqmfo2
nyti.ms/2Xqmfo2
