Venezuela's, More Like Latin America's, Spillover Disease Epidemic By Liv Przydzial

(Sources:
- https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/watch/measles-brazil
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/10/31/feature/as-venezuelas-health-system-collapses-disease-spreads-beyond-its-borders/
- https://www.sbs.com.au/news/at-least-54-children-dead-in-venezuela-measles-outbreak-ngo)

Venezuela's, More Like Latin America's, Spillover Disease Epidemic 

By Liv Przydzial 

Venezuela, the victim of a five-year-long depression, has reached the point of societal collapse long ago. From government corruption, to food scarcity, to nearly 2 million people leaving the country over the last two years, Venezuela is, in essence, falling apart. As Venezuela is in a tropical climate, diseases tend to thrive in this country. However, Venezuela has typically been able to contain such diseases and eradicate them accordingly, seen most recently in the malaria epidemic decades ago. The disease was contained and wiped out from certain regions, which have been free of it since. This was all before Venezuela began the steep slide downhill. In the last few months, Venezuela has seen malaria outbreaks in the regions in which it was eradicated from decades ago. Immigrants brought over new diseases which flourished in the nourishing Venezuelan conditions, which are spilling over borders at an unmeasurable rate. Surrounding countries face similar collapses in the face of these detrimental diseases, with immigrants flowing from country to country in search of refuge from their governments and the diseases. Just recently, a new disease was brought to Venezuela: measles.

Venezuela was a relatively poor country to begin with, but with its economy in a state of constant turmoil and crisis, only a staggeringly small amount of people are able to get vaccinated for measles. Venezuela hasn't seen measles in years, but in the Brazilian Amazon, Venezuela's next-door neighbor, measles have recently been devastating the region. Diphtheria, a bacterial infection affecting the nose and throat areas, is extremely rare here, but has now taken over Venezuela's people, who cannot afford to be vaccinated (this disease is easily prevented with a single vaccination, but considering the economic state of the country and its people, it is with no surprise that they cannot afford such vaccinations for such a (previously) rare disease). With more than 170 new cases every week, the epidemic is spreading at an astronomical rate, and diffusing into neighboring Latin American countries. Furthermore, many doctors are inexperienced when it comes down to measles, given that most had never seen a single case of this or other introduced diseases in their entire careers, only reading about them in textbooks.

Pictured above is a measles patient with her mother at Delphina Rinaldi Abdel Aziz Hospital in Venezuela. She ended up pulling through and surviving the disease.  

Containing these diseases, let alone treating them, has become an increasing challenge over the last handful of years. Doctors complain of the holes in the walls in disease wards. Some point to the overlooked slipping of Venezuela's health care system as the culprit for this growing crisis, while others look to the collapse of the country as a whole. Vaccines aren't being delivered to hospitals, and even the capital's largest hospital, Caracas University Hospital, has reported that it has not received new shipments of vaccines due to the inability to transport them. Cars and trucks are dysfunctional due to the lack of spare parts needed for them to be fixed and to function and the many blocked roads. Many doctors fear voicing their opinion on the issue, as making one wrong move could lead to a potentially fatal avalanche of government reprisals.

Workers from the Health Surveillance Foundation are pictured preparing measles vaccines for waiting patients. 

With the interior tensions brewing on economic, social, and political fronts, countries are turning on each other as new cases of such diseases pour through their borders. With so much unrest, diseases such as measles, malaria, and diphtheria have become a pressing new threat and the new symbol of this conflict. After all, this is not just Venezuela's problem - it's ours too. Just by looking at how uncontrollably fast diseases such as measles are spreading, this conflict could very quickly threaten not only Latin America, but other, vaster regions of the world, and even us, as immigrants move across the globe.

Want to learn more? Here's a quick video on herd immunity, which directly discusses measles as an example. (The video wouldn't upload, so here's the link: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/at-least-54-children-dead-in-venezuela-measles-outbreak-ngo)