The message is now globalized: self-isolation or social distancing seeks to stop the spread of Covid-19 to avoid, among other things, the collapse of health systems. In Latin America, there are countries where the shortcomings are more evident.
The Pan-American Health Organization, through its director Carissa F. Etienne, who is also regional director for the Americas at the World Health Organization, said March 9 that they will deploy extra support in the region “with particular emphasis on those with the weakest health systems.”
According to Etienne’s briefing in Washington, reproduced by the DeVex media platform, those countries are “Venezuela, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guyana, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, and some Caribbean island states.”
“What is very important is that we recognize that the countries with weaker health systems carry a higher risk, a higher risk not just for importation but for the ability to ensure strong surveillance … to manage cases to save lives, and to ensure infection prevention,”Etienne said.
In Venezuela, the health and humanitarian emergency that has been accumulating for years is well known. The data given by his regime says there are 10 people diagnosed with the coronavirus.
According to the most recent bulletin of the Venezuelan National Hospitals Survey of August and September 2019, an average of 58% of the x-ray services in public hospitals nationwide are not operational. “That is to say, more than half of the reference hospitals at the national level do not have the capacity to perform one of the most frequent studies for the diagnosis of patients, such as a chest x-ray”. On the other hand, the average inoperability of the laboratories is 55%.
In the case of emergencies, the survey says, hospitals have an average of 30 to 39 beds, giving an average of five to seven emergency beds for each doctor and nurse, “which is a ‘comfortable’ ratio in relation to other countries. Chile, for example, has a 1:10 ratio in shock trauma units.” But they note: “However, we must take into account the context of our hospitals that have progressively become large emergency rooms due to the technical impossibility of complying with the minimum programming of elective care.”
As a support, a group of innovators and programmers from the non-profit organization Code for Venezuela has just designed a bot, through the Telegram social network (@CovidVzlaBot is their username), that serves as a triage for the user to know in what situation they are facing the coronavirus.
“Hello!
I’m an automated assistant. I’m here to provide you with accurate information about COVID-19 (…) Please note that you will not receive medical evaluation. If you have severe symptoms, seek medical attention. This service is not a substitute for consulting with your doctor.”
The bot then asks a series of questions about location, symptoms, risk factors. At the end it gives a conclusion on whether the medical risk for getting virus is high or not and recommends isolation and contacting a trusted doctor.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B9xj0CGnwfR/
The creators of the bot said on Twitter that the questions they make are endorsed by Médicos por la Salud (Doctors for Health), the national network of doctors in Venezuela that created and runs the National Hospital Survey.
Along with them, Code for Venezuela also keeps track of updated cases around the world, starting with Latin America.
The general data about Covid-19 moves with the minutes, but officially Latin America is the second region in the world with the least diagnosed cases reported. In the data of the 17 countries where there are already cases, the figures are still in double digits, except for Brazil. These countries have taken drastic measures: border closures, bans on flights from China, Korea, Italy and Spain, suspension of activities involving crowds and congestion.
In the data of the Code for Venezuela, the confirmed data for Venezuela are 16 and in the rest of the region the figures are considerably higher than the official ones. The record is based on the John Hopkins University Data Repository.